Relativity
by with the monsters
Summary: We'll tattoo the hours onto our hands and the minutes onto our feet. - —The Next Generation, in every way possible.
1. A Basic Introduction

**A Basic Introduction**  
(or _What the Hell This is All About, Anyway_.)

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This entire collection is dedicated without hesitation to Amy (Amy is Rockin), who encourages me and inspires me and makes me a better writer (and a better person while she's at it). There will be various other dedications within, for different chapters, but the whole thing is for Amy, always&forever. I love you, man.

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Okay, so, here's the deal. Amy is Rockin and I decided to have a little (well, large) Next-Gen… I don't know, competition, I guess? We've got a list of all possible Next-Gen pairings (including three female OCs of our choosing), and we're racing to write oneshots about each of them before the other. (This is only het, non-incest pairings, by the way.) There are now quite a few other people doing this too, so keep an eye out! (Mystii, xrawrDINOSAURx, HollywoodNights, Acacia Thorn, Aiiimy)

Mine will, I believe, be mostly unconnected – although I'll keep all characters in the same houses and the same ages and with the same friends to try to minimise confusion!

I'll be leaving my OTPs probably until last – i.e. TeddyLily, RoseScorpius, MollyLysander, etc., so please don't bother asking me to do those yet. Otherwise, if you have a pairing you want to see next, feel free to leave a request in a review! The only condition is that you must give me a one-word prompt at the same time. So get your thinking caps on!

Now, each oneshot must be between 600 and 3000 words, and we're allowed to include a maximum of five freeverses altogether. Otherwise, the rules are pretty simple: write until your fingers fall off!

If you're going to be reading mine I respectfully beg you to read Amy's and everyone else's too, as they will doubtless far surpass mine in skill.

Something has just occured to me that is probably important for you to know: I write Lily Luna with green eyes. I always have, and I always will. I know it's not canon, but I don't care. In my head, she will always and forever have green eyes. I'm sorry if this bothers you, but it will not change.

For the record, my three female OCs will be: **Chloe Nott** (daughter of Daphne Greengrass and Theodore Nott), **Jenny Rogers** (muggleborn girl the same age as James Sirius) and **Katherine** ("Katie")** Finnegan** (daughter of Lavender Brown and Seamus Finnegan).

And now I will shamelessly steal Aimy's idea and give everyone a list of the houses I'm placing all the characters in, to try to prevent too much confusion. The list is actually pretty easy to remember, because I place most of them in one house.

Ravenclaw; Hugo, Lysander, Lorcan, Louis.

Hufflepuff; Katherine, Lucy.

Slytherin; Lily, Chloe.

Gryffindor; Victoire, James, Molly, Dominique, Albus, Roxanne, Fred, Rose, Jenny, Teddy, Scorpius.


	2. TeddyVictoire

**a/n**: So, with no further ado, numero uno…

**pairing**: VictoireTeddy (I can't believe it either.)  
**word count**: 1120

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**something was bound to go right  
**something was bound to go right sometime today  
all these broken pieces fit together to make a perfect picture of us  
_- Daybreak, Snow Patrol_

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They're undeniably an event, because she's Victoire and this is just the way things happen. There's the first moment – _breathe in, breathe out _– and the tilt of the head and the slight pursing of the lips and the gentle winding of fair hair around a pale finger.

And then there's the second moment – _breathe in, breathe out _– and the boy is hers.

Just like that.

She's secretly kind of proud of it because she doesn't even use her Veela magnetism. It's there and it lurks in the depths of her like a disease, strangling her insides and her life with its radiant glow.

But she's Victoire, and she doesn't _need _it. She battles it down and keeps it contained and if it shows then that's it, show's over, it's time to leave. Dominique has the magnetism too, but she's always been a much more volatile mixture of Veela and Weasley than Victoire has and she needs it to feel… worth something, maybe.

Victoire doesn't understand that. But then she doesn't make much of an effort to. Because she's Victoire, and this life is hard enough without adding her little sister's worries to her own.

So Victoire battles onwards with her life, gliding in her own special glow with her hair always perfect and her eyes always just that little bit too knowing and really, the poor guy never had a chance.

It takes one afternoon cooped up in Lily's treehouse for him to start noticing her – _really noticing_.

He clambers up behind her baby cousin, extending a hand down to help her up, and really Victoire's heels aren't built for tree-climbing but this is Teddy and this sort of thing just happens around him. Especially when Lily's involved.

And soon enough the three of them are sitting, a little cramped, in the Potter's treehouse, and Teddy is shooting these _looks _at Victoire over Lily's fiery curls, and Victoire has known him long enough to know the meaning of these looks.

"Look, Teddy!" Lily suddenly exclaims, and suddenly the girl is rocketing out of his lap and diving to capture a butterfly as it beats its wings helplessly against the window. "He was stuck!"

"How do you know it's a he?" Teddy inquires, and Victoire watches as their two heads bend over the insect held in Lily's palms – one all _firefirefire_, the other some god-awful shade of Magenta – and for the first time in a while feels the desire to let all that Veela-magnetism rush out of her and _incinerate _Lily and still Teddy's soul and bring it to rest alongside hers.

But she's encountered this feeling before, and she's strong enough now to battle it down. Because Lily is her cousin, and she's _seven_, and really why is Victoire feeling like the child might be a … a _rival_, or something equally stupid.

"Lily," Victoire says suddenly, beckoning her cousin over and bending to whisper in her ear. "Do you think you could run and fetch James for me? I need to ask him something."

"Ask him what?" Lily inquires suspiciously, eyes narrowed, and Victoire taps the side of her nose and smiles.

"It's a secret."

"No fair! No secrets!" Lily wails, and when Victoire just smiles knowingly she runs over to Teddy and starts tugging on his shoulder. "C'mon, Ted, make her tell me! _Please_?"

She draws out the "e", but Teddy's been subject to this particular face/voice combo before, and he doesn't budge.

"Get James," he tells her with a slight smile to betray his amusement, and Lily pouts and stomps all the way over to the trap door.

"I hate James," she informs them right before she disappears from view, and then suddenly Victoire and Teddy are alone – _breathe in, breathe out _– and there's really almost no space between them at all and it would be the most natural thing in the world to just reach over and –

"That kid is crazy," Teddy comments as he leans out of the window to watch Lily's erratic progress across the lawn. "I don't know where she gets it from."

"Why do you like spending so much time with her, then?" Victoire inquires, edging slightly nearer so she can spell that special Teddy scent rolling off him – _breathe in, breathe out _– and fighting, all the time fighting, that Veela pull inside her.

"She's my friend," Teddy replies so defensively that Victoire gets the feeling he might get teased by his mates quite a lot about this. "I love her."

Victoire smiles, and suddenly she's close enough for her shoulder to be touching his. "I think it's lovely," she comments, nudging him gently and smiling when he finally turns to look at her. "You're her world."

Teddy smiles slightly then, looking at her – and then he's _really _looking and she's realised that the Veela gene has surfaced and she's _letting _it pull him in and –

"No, Teddy," she says as he gets a somewhat dazed look in his eyes, his hand wandering towards the bare skin of her arm. "Not like this."

He blinks a couple of times, and she sees the clarity in his gaze, and then suddenly he's pulling her towards him and at the touch of his hands on her skin she's _burning _and… it was always supposed to be her in control.

"Stop overthinking this," he complains with a hint of petulance, and then his lips are meeting hers in an explosion of fireworks and a million other clichéd things.

_Breathe in, breathe out._

_

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_

And it becomes the way, with them. Never really "involved", never really anything – just stolen kisses in private moments with his hands on her body and her arms around his neck and their lips moulding, moving, blazing raggedly against each other.

There's a sense that she gets, sometimes, that maybe he's just with her because… well, not because of her body, although that's happened before – but because he's waiting on something (some_body_) that he can't have, not yet, and she'll be good for tiding him over.

She should resent it, she supposes, but in all honesty what she has with Teddy is negligible, something that she likes but not something she needs to survive. It's moments of passion tempered by days of disinterest, and for a girl like Victoire this just isn't enough.

So she keeps cool, plays the field, and most of all she learns a little more about how easy it is to just keep breathing, keep playing the game, keep surviving. To not do anything about your situation but give in to it, regardless of whether it's good for you or not.

She's Victoire, and this is how she lives.

_Breathe in, breathe out. This is your life now._

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_**a/n**: if you like this enough to favourite/alert, I beg you not to do so without reviewing!_  
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	3. MollyScorpius

**a/n**: hey, I got this one up quickly! I like writing Molly, she's awfully complex.

And good news, folks – Ela (HollywoodNights) is also joining the competition. So we have a four-horse race now. Make sure you go reviews the other three when they're up, yeah?

**pairing**: MollyScorpius  
**words**: 862

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**the haunting type of decision  
**more than anything i want to see you, girl  
take a glorious bite out of the whole world  
_- You Could Be Happy, Snow Patrol_

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Because she's Molly, and if she didn't have perfect she'd have nothing.

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For her perfection is not a goal, it's a state of being. It's the end of result of great hair, brilliant fashion-sense, a pretty face and some artful form of grace that could pass for elegance if you tilted your head to the side and squinted a little.

Because in a family like hers, you've got to have _something _to make you stand out.

Victoire's got the beauty, pure and simple and incandescent. Dominique's got the volatility, some unique mixture of Weasley and Veela that makes her one-hundred-percent-heartbreaker. And Lily's got the wit and Lucy's got the artistic talent and Roxanne's got the kindness and Rose has got the brains.

So where does that leave Molly?

Twelve percent Weasley and eighty-eight percent invisible, no particular personality trait to mark her out. She could be the rebellious one, she supposes, but in all honesty Lily's pretty much got that one covered; or perhaps the slut – except, if she's honest, Victoire's on that already.

So she picks perfection, and surprisingly it's easier than she'd have thought.

It starts with the hair. She's sitting in front of her mirror one morning in third year and she's staring at the mass of flyaway red curls that show promise of being a little more controllable in the future, but for now are just some Merlin-awful mess of copper and fire and bird's-nest.

She pulls out her wand, regards it carefully for a moment, and then casts a spell Victoire taught her one time and watches, entranced, as each hair straightens when she runs the tip of her wand over it.

From that day forward, Molly wears her hair straight.

Over the years her skirts get a little shorter and her make-up gets a little more careful and her fashion sense turns into something out of _Gossip Girl_ until she's unrecognisable, just this perfect little Queen Bee who's everything her father ever wanted and everything she never expected.

She looks in that mirror, the one where she first started turning into this girl she doesn't recognise, and she wonders where it all went wrong.

Undoubtedly, the boy is one of these things that goes wrong. He's a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but to Molly he's just a one-way ticket to never-ending popularity and so she sets her sights on him.

And Scorpius, perhaps innocently (or perhaps not innocently at all) falls for it and during sixth year they become MollyandScorpius and if you say it right it sounds good, but if you say it wrong – like a lot of people do – then it sounds twisted and wrong and something that should never really have happened.

They soldier onwards, ignoring the annoyance of various Weasley/Potter family members, and every day their popularity burns a little brighter and they fade out just a little more.

Because these two are not suited, not at all, and it's just some awful mess of lies and using and they need to get out while they can.

In the end, Molly likes the way it happens. It's perfect because she retains her popularity while gaining a vulnerable edge, and Scorpius keeps his bad-boy reputation.

She catches him with Rose in the Room of Requirement, and she's not really sorry at all but she throws things and bursts into tears and pretends to be, because she's Molly and this is the way her life works.

She storms back up to Gryffindor Tower and she thinks that maybe her vanity is wounded more than her heart, because she was never supposed to be the one being cheated on, not ever.

But Lily – little Lily Luna, the Slytherin with a tongue sharper than the sword of Gryffindor – she sneaks her way up into Molly's dormitory and she holds her older cousin while she cries, and then she takes Molly's hands and makes an Unbreakable Vow with her to get revenge on everyone who's ever hurt her.

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So Molly gets revenge on Scorpius by stealing all his underwear and stringing it across the Great Hall, and revenge on Rose by stringing _her _underwear next to it.

And then that just leaves her father – her inept, darling father who's always pushed her too hard too fast and never let her just be _Molly_.

During the summer, she and Lily sneak out and they go to a Muggle tattoo parlour that Lily (naturally) knows the owner of, and she gets a tattoo on her left shoulder in blueblue ink.

She shows it off proudly when she gets home, and while some of the adults are furious a few – the clever few with a sense of irony almost as highly developed as Lily and Molly's – stifle smiles and try to calm the others down.

When she gets back to school, Molly tugs her shirt off and turns her back to that mirror, craning over her shoulder as her hair tumbles down her back, the red curls brightbrightbright against her pale skin, and studies the words with a truly genuine smile stretching out her cheeks.

_clearly i have made some bad decisions._

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**a/n**: again, if you like this enough to favourite/alert, I beg you not to do so without reviewing!


	4. VictoireLysander

**a/n**: For BlueEyes444, who requested this pairing with the prompt **guilt.**

**pairing**: VictoireLysander  
**words**: 842

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**a pair of lovestruck hearts  
**her gravity make me feel light-headed  
small-talk turns to dust in my mouth  
_- Absolute Gravity, Snow Patrol_

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Because you're a boy and for your species it always seems to be these two girls.

* * *

You're not the first one to make this choice, although you do take a slightly different approach to the other guys because your choice makes itself.

Because there's Lily – darling, eloquent, _blazing _Lily with her hair like fire and her whole being a revolution, an entire rebellion contained in the slim form of this beauty girl. She was always out of your league, but you pretended that you didn't know that.

You went for the friend angle – and it wasn't angle at all, because you two were really and truly great friends. You teased laughs out of her when nobody else could and you dried her tears when it was _him _that was causing them and you loved her, oh how you loved her, all that time.

You had detention together more times than you can count because her natural instinct to fight against the rules combines happily and naturally with your total lack of ability to listen to authority.

So you two grew together and learned together and you were quite possibly the best friends _ever._

But for her, it was always Teddy – _alwaysalwaysalways_ – even when he broke her heart and knocked her down; and sometimes you wonder if you did the right thing picking her up over and over again. Because, the truth is, every time she fell it got a little harder to pick her up because your frustration mounted – he didn't _love _her, couldn't she see that? – and all you wanted to do was lie next to her fallen form and take her in your arms and show her what love, _real love_, could be.

But then naturally she champions, wins the day, gets her man and rides off happily into the sunset with him. She still loves you in her own little Lily way, don't get me wrong – but you can't love her the same way, not any more. Not when she's crushed all your hopes without even realising she's done it.

You hate her, some days.

But then you run out of energy for that and you revert to loving her from afar, miserably and agonisingly and raggedly.

But that other girl… oh, she's as painfully jagged around the edges as you are. She's all soothing silk to Lily's fire, kindness to her barbs, sophistication to her urchin-like ways.

(And, yeah, she's totally too old for you – but you're Lysander, and these are just details.)

So you find her sitting at a bar all alone, and that's only surprising because this is _Victoire _and the minute she walks into a room she has at least three men fighting to buy her a drink.

You know that she battles her Veela side down – you've been friends with Dominique for years now, after all, and you've become almost immune to her particular brand of brilliance. But with Victoire – dull, lost-looking Victoire – there's no subtle glow, no sheen of radiance, no electric magnetism pulling you in.

So you go over and hop up onto the stool next to her and order a drink for you both.

"Where's Lily?" she asks after a short (awkward) silence, fingers tracing pictures in spilt salt on the wooden bar top. "Aren't you two like, joined at the hip or something?"

You snort once with little humour, face down and one foot tapping absently against the floor.

"Not any more," you reply, lips twisting sideways. "She's all Teddy's."

"Yes," Victoire breathes, accepting the drink when it comes delicately. "The happy couple. So freaking _perfect_."

You both sit and drink in silence for a while, and then suddenly she's turning to you and her polished veneer is slipping and there's true wildness in her eyes, her hair a golden nimbus around her lovely face as one hand clutches onto your shirt sleeve like she'll drown without you anchoring her there.

"You know what's the worst thing?" she demands of you, eyes wide and – to your horror – filling rapidly with tears. "I can't hate him! I've _tried_ and tried and tried and I just _can't_."

"Tell me about it," you reply, and somehow your hand is around hers, and okay she's quite a few years above you but in that moment there are no barriers, no leagues. Just you and the girl and your drinks, lost and lonely and seeking something you don't understand the nature of yet.

"You're in love with her too?" Victoire inquires sadly, turning back to her drink, and you squeeze her fingers tightly and hold her gaze clearly when she turns back to face you again.

"Less and less so by the second."

She smiles slightly, almost hesitantly, and you beam back immediately and unreservedly.

When you kiss her a few hours later, her skin pale and smooth against your rough, tanned hands, this doesn't feel like guilt as you had been so convinced it would.

Instead it feels like… like coming home, or something. (You've never had much of a way with words, anyhow.)

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**a/n**: again, if you like this enough to favourite/alert, I beg you not to do so without reviewing!


	5. VictoireScorpius

**a/n**: for andthenshesaid, because she's a great reviewer and because she was hoping for this pairing.

Also, I realise that this is a bit of a Victoire overload, but I promise not to do a Victoire piece for at least the next five, how does that sound?

**pairing**: VictoireScorpius**  
words**: 1031

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**basic rules of inheritance**  
she is love  
and i believe her when she speaks_  
- She Is Love, Oasis_

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Victoire reckons that the boy only catches her eye because she's so _bored. _He's far too young, but sadly that's only usually a problem for her before she's got a couple of drinks inside her.

And tonight, Victoire has far more than a couple sloshing around her veins.

You see, the Muggle nightclub had seemed like such a brilliant idea when Clarissa suggested it. A night of dancing and forgetting your troubles – what could be better? So she'd dressed up in her best party outfit, battled that Veela gene down (_way _down), and got herself absolutely wasted within about an hour.

And now she is seriously, extremely, and completely bored.

Naturally, that's when the best-looking boy she's seen in a while collapses onto the barstool next to her and orders her a drink.

"I don't want one," she replies instantly because he's – what, eighteen? – and she's not really into cradle-snatching.

"C'mon, one drink," he coaxes, and his eyes are sincere and familiar somehow. She's thinking that she's sure she knows this guy from somewhere when suddenly there's another drink in front of her and he's inviting her to dance.

Victoire divides her gaze between him and the glass, and then she's throwing all caution to the wind and taking two large gulps of the burning liquid and accepting his hand out onto the dance floor.

And, because she's Victoire and this is the sort thing that happens to her, soon he's dancing closer than she would normally be comfortable with. But the alcohol rages and controls and she does nothing, says nothing, just looks forward to a night where she won't have to remember even something so important as her own name.

"So what do they call you?" she shouts over the music, and he smiles – genuinely, beamingly smiles – and leans to yell into her ear.

"Among 'twat' and 'idiot' and 'git', it's usually Scorpius."

"Scorpius," she repeats, and warning bells are going off in her head for reasons she cannot fathom so she merely shrugs them off and leans in to holler messily into his ear. "I'm Victoire."

There's something that looks suspiciously like a smirk on his face when she draws back, and his lips shape words she can't hear (that look suspiciously like "I know") so she just smiles broadly, her body swaying with the music.

And then suddenly his hands are on her and his mouth is pressing against hers and she realises that she's done it, she's let it slip, that Veela pull has blazed out of her like a river of molten gold and he's caught, handsome Scorpius is caught like a fish in a net.

Usually at this point she'd back off, retreat, run away and fight and fight and fight until she's normal again, back to just plain (beautiful) Victoire, with no subtle burn of luminescence around her.

But it's been so long since that fight with Teddy and she _needs _this, needs it desperately – and since when has being drunk improved your sense of judgement?

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She wakes up the next morning in a stranger's bed with his blonde head on the pillow next to her and her brain feeling like it might explode if she makes any sudden movements. So she lies completely still, utterly not sure what to do with herself, and just watches him breathe.

He rolls over suddenly, and through the haze of the hangover something about the planes of his face is very familiar, and then – _oh, Merlin, nononono, please no _– she's placing him and she's scrambling out of bed and onto the floor, clutching the sheets around herself, not sure whether to scream or cry.

"Ugh, Merlin, can't you just let a guy sleep?" he inquires in a sleep-heavy voice, burying his face in the pillows. "It's only nine-thirty. Come back to bed."

"But…but…but… but you're _Scorpius Malfoy_," she stammers, standing and backing away in the direction of the bathroom. "As in, _Rose's Scorpius_."

He turns his head back to face her again, still resting on his pillow, and he looks decidedly forlorn as he rubs his forehead.

"We're on a break," he informs her blankly, obviously trying hard not to let emotion show through. "She thinks I'm quote-unquote 'selfish and arrogant'."

"Well, I hate to state the obvious," Victoire replies, "but you kind of _are_."

"Shut up, Weasley," he retorts instantly, and suddenly he's flinging her dress over the bed at her, grinning slightly. "Go get dressed."

"You little –"

"Now, now," he admonishes her, finally rising from the bed and pulling on a pair of boxer shorts. "I'm not the one who tricked an innocent boy into my bed using freaky Veela voodoo crap."

"It was an accident," she responds, instantly on the defensive, and she doesn't know why she's the one giving ground when he paces towards her because – after all – she's twenty-four and a Weasley and she was one of the best in her year at magic. But this man – this _boy _is eighteen and there's something sort of wild about the way he is, so she retreats into the bathroom to get dressed.

"Hey, I've got an idea," she says as she exits, now dressed, trying to coax her hair into some semblance of normality. "How about we never mention this again?"

He sizes her up, considering, and then a slight smile forms on his lips and he blows her a kiss.

"Whatever you like," he replies nonchalantly, standing there in the middle of his bedroom as though he hasn't a care in the world. She ignores the kiss and bolts out of the door, apparating away as soon as is humanely possible and arriving back at her flat in a daze of kiss-bruised lips and a pounding hangover.

She leans back against her closed front door, shoes clutched in her hands, and she doesn't cry – because she's Victoire, and her whole life is just one big mess of boys and mistakes and bad decisions, and if she said she wasn't used to it by now she'd be lying.

Later, in wilder moments, she regards her younger cousins and she thinks that making bad decisions is most definitely a family trait.

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**a/n**: again, if you like this enough to favourite/alert, I beg you not to do so without reviewing!


	6. LilyLorcan

**a/n**: Okay, so, a little while ago (in fact, ages ago) I wrote a LilyLysander oneshot from Lily's point-of-view entitled of leotards&fluorescent orange legwarmers. Now, while I am generally not particularly keen on first person, that fic was an awful lot of fun to write.

Thus, due to the fact that my last few pieces have been decidedly on the angsty side, I have attempted a more light-hearted piece. I beg you to give it a chance.

**pairing**: LilyLorcan  
**words**: 2642

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**Tigerlily**  
so take a chance  
and don't ever look back  
_- Teenage Dream, Katy Perry_

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Greetings, world. Lily Luna Potter. Fifteen, Slytherin, _bored._

And currently stuffed into a tiger costume, but that is totally _not _my fault. It has all to do with a bet (as usual in this family) between myself and Dominique and Roxanne.

The bet: Professor Binns won't notice if we have a tea-party in the middle of his lesson.

The forfeit for the loser: spend the next two days dressed up as an animal of the winner's choice.

Roxanne thought he'd notice. Dom and I were convinced he wouldn't.

He noticed. (Although he didn't tell us off or anything, just kept teaching. We tried to argue that it didn't count, but Roxanne was firm. Seriously, for such a nice girl, she can be _mean_.)

Hence the fact that we are now sitting at the back of transfiguration, waiting for Professor Norton to arrive, in furry animal onesies.

I wanted to go as a snake, but Roxanne said it was too predictable. So now I'm a tiger – complete with be-eared hat – and Dom is a poodle. The poodle was my idea. Dom's furious, but I think she looks super adorable.

So, anyway, here we are sitting in Transfig with Roxanne sniggering away next to us and the other members of the class giving us weird looks while we sit and sweat – because the costumes are so bloody hot, not because we're embarrassed – and wait for Professor Norton.

I'm not going to lie, I'm actually kind of looking forward to this. Teachers are so unpredictable. Some will laugh and some will get angry. Brown might even _cry_.

So we sit there and, as the door opens, Dom and I at exactly the same time reach up and raise our animal hoods. I think the ears are a nice touch, actually. They make the costumes completely unmissable.

It takes Professor Norton about two minutes to notice.

"Potter, Weasley," he says, and four heads turn in his direction. "_Dominique _Weasley," he clarifies, and Roxanne and Fred exchange a look and chuckle. The rest of the class is silent as Dom and I sit up straighter and put on our best 'serious and confused' faces.

"Yes sir?" Dom asks angelically, grey eyes bright and inquisitive under the curly, furry white hat. "Is there a problem, sir?"

He folds his arms and just _looks _at us. I take this moment to admire his biceps. For a teacher, y'know, he's actually quite hot.

"You're dressed as animals," he comments eventually, and we beam simultaneously.

"Yes sir!" I reply in a very chipper fashion, looking as though he has made my day by informing us of this. "We know sir! We put our costumes on this morning, sir!"

I feel a bit like a House Elf – all the "sir!"s might be overdoing it slightly – but, hey, if a things worth doing it's worth doing well.

"Lily's a tiger, sir," Dom joins in from beside me, still beaming broadly. "I think she looks really cute, sir."

I put on my most innocent face (it is an overused expression). "And Dominique's a poodle, sir. She's adorable, isn't she, sir?"

"Enough!" he shouts, and our grins fade exactly on cue, our faces schooled into remorseful expressions while we high-five under the table.

"Sorry, sir," I mutter, and Dominique gulps, her eyes watering with extremely impressive crocodile tears.

"We didn't mean to misbehave, sir," she concurs, a single tear slipping down her cheek. I think that is a very nice touch. "We just thought you liked our costumes, sir."

"You will go change _immediately_," he informs us, scowling mightily as the rest of the class tries to contain their laughter. "This is not optional."

"But sir," Dominique interrupts, her bottom lip now wobbling. "We made an Unbreakable Vow, sir. We can't change, sir."

"I don't want to die, sir," I say in a very small voice, Dom and I sinking further into our chairs at the exact same rate. "I'm too young to die, sir."

He puts his head into his hands and looks like he might cry. This is going even better than I had hoped.

"Who made this vow with you?"

Dom and I turn to Roxanne at the exact same time, and point with massive smiles at her.

"Miss Weasley," Professor Norton says, looking disappointed. I hate it when teachers do that, they're so much more fun when they're angry. "I wouldn't have expected this of you."

Dominique and I are briefly taken aback. I mean, Roxanne's a _Weasley _– what _does _he expect of her?

"Sorry sir," Roxanne replies, looking contrite. "But it's Lily and Dom – there's no other way to get them to actually do something apart from making an Unbreakable Vow."

Professor Norton divides his gaze between the three of us, and then evidently reaches a decision.

"Five points from Gryffindor and five from Slytherin for your general stupidity," he informs me and Dom, and then turns to Roxanne. "And three points _to _Gryffindor for managing to get them into those ridiculous costumes."

Mine and Dom's jaws drop, and we are temporarily speechless. (This is not a regular occurrence.)

But he's wearing his fiercest face, and I really don't fancy detention this Friday - I've got plans to gatecrash Rose and Malfoy's date - so we sink lower into our chairs and shut up for the rest of the lesson.

* * *

Lessons are great fun for the rest of the morning – Professor Brown does cry, for anybody who's wondering – and I'm grateful not for the first time that Dom and I have elected to take all the same OWL classes.

We finally get to Care of Magical Creatures, and Dom and I are having a fabulous time on all fours on the ground pretending to be a real tiger and a poodle – for the record, Dom is the _queen _of lifelike barks – and when Hagrid arrives he doesn't notice us. I guess we're too far from his eyes.

"Righ', class, let's get righ' into it," he begins, and then pauses and shades his eyes. "Where's Lily Po'er and Dominique Weasley?"

"Technically," I say, standing up and casually brushing myself off, "That should be where _are_ Lily and Dominique."

"Yeah," Dom adds as I give her a hand up. "Because we're plural and you use "is" for a singular thing."

"This is Care of Magical Creatures, not 'how to speak English'," Hagrid replies, not looking too bothered – Dom and I have been correcting his grammar since we started the class in Third Year, he's pretty used to it now. "What were you doing on the floor?"

"Pretending to be a tiger, sir," I say at the exact same time as Dominique replies, "Pretending to be a poodle, sir."

He gives us a long look, and then shakes his fringe out of his eyes and evidently decides to ignore us, not even questioning the outfits.

"Righ', kids, we're going to be continuing our study of Jarveys today," he announces proudly, and Dom and I groan simultaneously.

"Do you have a problem with that, ladies?" Hagrid inquires dangerously, and we exchange a look and then shake our heads.

"No, sir," I say, and then add under my breath, "I just love being verbally abused for two hours straight by talking ferrets."

We head into the paddock where Hagrid has the stupid creatures in cages, already glaring at us, the odd few beginning to swear and call us names already.

In the crowd, I lose Dom, and find myself standing next to Lorcan Scamander, an old pal of mine.

"Scamander," I say brightly, smiling up at him and using my tiger tail to hit Fred where he's standing in front of me.

"Go away, Potter," he replies with slight irritation, so I move closer to him because I know how much he hates it.

(Perhaps I should clarify – when I say "old pals", I mean that we have known and mutually disliked each other since we were one, and regularly end up in detention together because of our fighting. This tends to be slightly awkward since his twin Lysander is probably my best friend in the whole world, and he regularly bets me that I can't go a week without pissing Lorcan off in some way or another. I have one victory thus far, and I have now known Lorcan for about 752 weeks altogether. It's worth it, though.)

"Seriously, Potter," he says, and I link my arm into his, pulling my tiger hat further up on my head with my free hand.

"You know, you're sort of sexy when you do that," I inform him cheerily, starting to swing my tail in a circle. "All tall and brooding like."

"Piss off," he retorts irritably, trying to detach himself, and I beam and snuggle closer.

"Love you, Lor."

"Potter, detach yourself from my arm before I _make _you," he commands dangerously, and I am gathering myself for a witty retort when suddenly Dominique bursts out of nowhere, barking like mad, and bowls me over. Instantly I release Lorcan, completely distracted, and chase after her, roaring quite impressively. I've been practising all day, and I'm a lot more believable now.

It takes Hagrid ten minutes to stop us chasing each other around, and then between us a further ten minutes to scourgify all the mud off each other.

Seriously, could this day get any better?

* * *

That evening I am feeling reflective (and hungry), so around eleven I am struck with a sudden fancy for a walk and some toast. The rules say I should be in bed by now, but naturally I have been disregarding these since my second week of First Year. (Mum says it's an inherited trait.)

I do not currently have the invisibility cloak, because I stole it off Al a couple of weeks ago and he promptly stole it back about eight days later. (This is prompt, for him. It usually takes at least three weeks.)

It's this lovely little game we play, you see. He pretends to get furious, but I know he loves it really.

So I am wandering up the corridors from the Slytherin common room, still in my tiger outfit, trying to fight my hair into some semblance of normality, when I turn a corner and plow right into someone.

Rather, into someone's _chest, _because the someone is _tall_.

"Potter," a familiar voice groans, and I recognise it instantly.

"Lorcan!" I cry with delight, throwing my arms around him and squeezing him tightly. "How spiffing to see you, old chap!"

"Tonight really is my lucky night, isn't it?" he asks, and I beam.

"Yes, it is."

"Rhetorical question, Potter," he retorts instantly, but my smile does not diminish.

"Fancy a snack?" I inquire, expression delightfully hopeful, hands clutched imploringly to my chest.

"With you?" he asks, and I level a hard 'don't-be-an-idiot' look at him.

"No, with my imaginary friend Roger," I reply, and he frowns. Suddenly, though, his expression clears and he looks thoughtful for a moment.

"Why not?" he answers eventually, and I am opening my mouth to speak when he affectionately (I'm sure) puts a hand over my mouth. "Rhetorical question, Potter."

I lick his hand in a friendly manner and grin broadly as he retracts it, complaining in a truly disgusted manner.

"Come on then!" I demand, hooking my arm into his and beginning to tug him down the corridor. "Snack time."

We arrive in the kitchen and I don't even have to ask before a House Elf sets two cups of coffee and two plates of toast with chocolate spread in front of us. These Elves really know me well now.

So we sit and munch in silence, and I'm studying Lorcan's forehead – he's looking at the table – and think that he really does have a very attractive forehead. And, y'know, nice hair. Even if it does look a bit like the colour of straw.

"Like what you see, Potter?" he inquires, and I snap out of my contemplative moment and return his gaze.

"Oh, come on, Scamander, don't pretend you don't fancy the pants off me," I reply with an eye roll, casually scooching on the bench round the table to him. "You just can't control yourself. It's so _obvious._"

"In your dreams, Potter," he says firmly, and I laugh in what I hope is a seductive way – I think it sounds more like a strangled cat (hey, cat, tiger, costume reference! I'm on fire today), but that is beside the point.

"No, no, Lorcan," I murmur suggestively, trying to control my laughter, "in _your _dreams."

He looks very torn, suddenly, and I am just reaching to push my furry hood back when suddenly he's looming towards me and crashing his mouth to mine.

I am briefly taken aback.

But, you know, he's quite a good kisser and he smells really nice so I just sort of start kissing him back (yeah, I'm a sucker for good-looking boys, sue me) and move even closer.

We break apart, and there is an awkward silence while I try to think of something to say and he just sits there, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Oh my _Merlin_," a loud voice says suddenly, and our heads snap to the right to find Dominique in her poodle outfit, surrounded by house-elves, looking like all her Christmases have come early. "Lily Luna Potter, you devil."

"Shut up," I reply instantly, clambering right over the table to get to her. "You say anything right now and you _die_."

She takes a deep breath – my family knows that I take threats seriously – and then appears to battle all her internal instincts to poke fun right down.

Eventually, she lets out what could be either a cough, giggle, or general splutter, and then pulls her poodle hood up.

"Well, I'd hate to disturb you," she says airily, already heading back to the door. "I'll see you two tomorrow."

I try to hex her while her back is turned, but sadly she is expecting this, and blocks it nicely.

"Good shield charm," I compliment, putting my wand away. "Have you been practising?"

"Yeah," she replies, grinning over her shoulder. "And you've been practising that hex – it almost got me this time."

"Good work," I tell her, and she repeats the same thing back and then disappears.

"What was that?" Lorcan inquires, and I jump and turn around. It's surprisingly easy to forget he's there. Or maybe I'm just easily distracted. Probably the former, though.

"What was what?" I ask, going back over to the table and hopping up onto the bench opposite him.

"That," he says, and I glare at him. "You and Dom, I mean. One minute you're fighting and the next you're… exchanging magic advice?"

"I'm sensing," I say slowly, "that you are trying to avoid the subject."

"What subject?" he tries hopefully, so I pander to him and don't just announce it immediately.

"The tense subject, the elephant in the room, the taboo topic," I clarify, and then point to my lips. "You kissing me. I thought you hated me."

"I'm starting to," he informs me darkly, and it is easy to tell how truly astonished I am at this turn of events by the fact I don't tease him even slightly about his broodiness.

"So you don't hate me?"

"Obviously."

There is another silence after this, and I am getting uncomfortably hot in my tiger outfit.

"So," I say finally, standing. "I've got to run. Early morning tomorrow and all. See you later."

And then I get the hell out of there like I'm being chased by Rose after I told Uncle Ron about her and Malfoy.

Summary of events: Lorcan situation turned on its head. Dominique in the know. Rose still angry about me telling Uncle Ron. Furry animals onesies really too hot to be practical.

A pretty good day, in the end.

* * *

**a/n**: again, if you like this enough to favourite/alert, I beg you not to do so without reviewing!


	7. TeddyLucy

**a/n**: this one (which I can't decide whether I'm pleased with or hate) is for merdarkandtwisty, who requested a TeddyLucy with the prompt: _tear_. I went for tear as in rip rather than tear as in crying, by the way. I'm not sure which it was supposed to be!

**pairing**: TeddyLucy  
**words**: 1759

* * *

**these accidents of faith  
**these accidents of faith and nature  
they tend to stick in the spokes of you  
- _Sunlight Through the Flags, Snow Patrol_

_

* * *

_

She catches his eye across the room, and okay so she can say 'hello' in six different languages but that doesn't mean she _will_.

* * *

She hates him easily. He's so… so… so _Teddy _(and, Merlin, he was always going to be his own adjective) and she watches her female cousins fall one-by-one, slowly and painfully and oh, she hates succumbing to clichés but here she is right in line with the rest, hearts thumping painfully whenever he walks in the room.

She decides to hate him pretty quickly. After all, that line between love and hate is so thin that it takes almost no effort to cross from one to the other and besides Lucy's always been about crossing lines.

The languages are a prime example of that, she supposes. It had started because her mother, her darling Muggle mother, had sat down with her at night, leaving Molly with their father, and wove Lucy tales of beautiful, far-off lands with people that spoke strange languages and how the only way to communicate with them was through a language of charades because there was that language barrier and nobody knew how to cross it.

Lucy, aged three, decides that crossing barriers is going to be her _thing_. After all, in a family of redheads she sticks out like a sore thumb with her blonde hair, and she thinks that if she's going to have something to mark her out she'd much rather it was a talent for something rather than hair colour, of all things.

So she'd asked as nicely as she could for her mother to take her to a language class.

"Which language?" Audrey had asked, not believing for a second that this phase of Lucy's would last longer than a month.

"Any," Lucy had replied, and there she is two days later sitting in a class for French.

Percy doesn't understand this obsession of hers, and he grows quickly sick of hearing his four-year-old daughter chattering away on the phone to Aunt Fleur to practice her language.

Two years later, having spent a month staying with Victoire and Dominique and Louis' grandparents, Lucy is comfortable in French.

"Fluent," Percy tells people proudly. "My daughter, six-years-old and fluent in French!"

Lucy doesn't bother to correct him, just tugs on his sleeve and whispers in his ear and asks for lessons in a different language.

And thus begins the Spanish.

She finds herself a Spanish friend at Muggle primary school somehow (Lucy has always been about getting things done), and soon Audrey and Percy and Molly are enduring two long phone calls a night – one to Aunt Fleur and the other to Eirene, and Merlin they have no idea where this talent of hers comes from but they're not going to stop her if she really does love it as much as she seems to.

Molly grows and turns into a perfect little witch, already in control of her magic by the time she's nine.

Lucy's magic is wild and uncontrolled, driven by her emotions and feelings – but by the time _she's _nine she can speak French, Spanish and Russian at least passably. It's a crazy ear this child has got for languages, and Audrey has to admit she likes the look of shock on people's faces when she takes Lucy out and people on the train are talking in one of these three languages, and Lucy will butt in just for the practice.

Then she goes off to Hogwarts with Molly, and Percy and Audrey wait with baited breath, desperate to know how their daughters are doing. Molly, naturally, comes home with top grades and a new sort of serenity clinging to her.

Lucy comes home with average marks, crumpled uniform and conversational Mandarin.

Percy doesn't know whether to be proud or to cry.

Molly finds her sister a little freakish, staying well out of the way when Lucy is on the phone practising one of her four languages with a variety of friends, but Lucy accepts it and moves on.

You see, there is some logic behind this madness of hers. She sees all these problems about her, lives spiralling out-of-control, people with nothing to drive them onwards. She worries that one of these days she'll have no goals, no willpower, not anymore.

So, rather than risk that trap of indolence, she sets her sights on a new language and she conquers it and, Godric, it feels better than anyone could possibly imagine when she can pass a group of strangers talking in a foreign language and understand every word they're saying as easily as if they were talking English.

Lucy has always been a girl on a mission.

So she carries on through school and Molly turns into this perfect little princess, everything their father ever wanted, and Lucy practises her languages with the sort of dedication usually only seen in brides dieting to fit into their wedding dresses, throwing herself into them _mindheartsoul_, barely even speaking English any more in her determination to master them, to control them, to conquer them.

Her grades get poorer and her father gets angrier and Lucy does the only thing she knows how to do, and starts learning a new language.

She picks German because she likes the rough cadences and the poetry, sinking into it as though she was always born to speak it. She finds herself a penpal from the Durmstrang Institute and she spends a lot of time writing to him, shutting herself away from her family to further delve into German.

Percy throws his hands up in despair and focuses on Molly, encouraging her in her perfection. Audrey stops and listens at the door to Lucy speaking on the Muggle mobile phone she'd insisted on having for her fourteenth birthday, and she never understands a word of what her daughter is saying but, heavens, she doesn't think any mother has ever been more proud.

* * *

Lucy, with her five extra languages, is a girl with a steely confidence and the knowledge that there are a great many places she could end up in the world and not have any difficulty getting around. She knows about countries and she knows about people and she knows a whole lot about grammar and inflection.

And, on her sixteenth birthday, she starts to know a little bit more about her family.

She watches and understands the way Victoire positions herself closer to Teddy any time anybody else is in the room, the way Teddy sits there obliviously as multiple teenage hearts twinge painfully, eyes darting in his direction.

Lucy, for someone who can say anything in six different languages, is surprisingly good at being quiet and observing. That might just be a natural consequence, though, because an ear for languages certainly requires a lot of listening.

So she sits in a corner and she listens to the babble of conversation and her focused brown eyes travel around the room and watch the way Victoire frowns unhappily as Lily blazes across the room and throws herself at Teddy, his hair changing to a bright green (that, now she thinks about it, is the same colour as Lily's eyes) as he hugs her tightly back.

Lucy doesn't know why it is that all these girls should pine so desperately after this one boy, so she makes him her next task. She sits a little closer to him and volunteers to help with the washing up when he does, talking to him easily and comfortably and striking up some strange sort of friendship.

(Lucy's always been a talker.)

And one night he _looks _at her, and maybe really _sees _her for the first time, and gosh he's far too old for her but she can feel her heart beating faster and oh, the sudden realisation of what it is that her cousins feel for him is like a dagger in her soul.

She feels her heart tearing, because he can _never be hers_, so she steps back and throws the plate she'd been washing back into the sink, and then she bolts from the room and she decides to _hate _him.

* * *

She avoids him successfully for nearly two years, managing to be deep in conversation in French with Dominique or Aunt Fleur or Victoire whenever he's in the room, or away staying with a foreign friend when there's a large family outing.

But then he's there, in her house, because it's hers and Molly's birthday and Lucy had just wanted a few friends but Molly had wanted _all _her friends and all her family, so now here's Lucy in the middle of this party which she hates, trying to keep at least forty people in between herself and Teddy.

But he corners her (ofcourseofcourse) and he's smiling down like something is funny as she feels the wall at her back and tucks her hair behind her ears and tries to pretend that she hates him, reallyreally hates him.

"Go away, Teddy," she says firmly, arms folded and one pale eyebrow perfectly arched. "I don't want to talk to you."

"Not even if I'll talk German to you?" he presses, lips pulled up on one side in a half-grin.

"You don't speak German," she retorts, and she wishes he would just _go away _because this isn't _fair_, it's not _right._ He belongs to Lily – no, wait, she means Victoire – and why is he _doing _this?

"Would it make a difference if I did speak German?" he inquires, head slightly tilted, hair going slowly purple.

"What are you doing, Teddy?" she asks, and oh that burn is starting somewhere in her chest. "What are you trying to achieve here?"

"I… it's your birthday," he says lamely, looking slightly taken aback, taking a step away from her. "I was trying to be nice."

"Yeah, well, don't," Lucy replies, and now he's looking hurt and what right does he have to look as hurt as that? She's the one who should be hurt, because he's just toying with her while he waits for Lily and/or Victoire to return from talking to Molly, keeping himself distracted by pulling another naïve little Weasley girl further and further in.

Lucy stares up into his confused face, her blonde hair a messy halo around her palepale face – and then she runs for it.

She collapses up into her bedroom, face against the blue sheets, and then she opens her mouth and _screams _for the infuriation of loving him so.

Because Lucy Weasley can speak six different languages, but she can't speak hatred at all.

* * *

**a/n**: again, if you like this enough to favourite/alert, I beg you not to do so without reviewing!


	8. FredKatherine

**a/n**: for Bethhhhhhh, who wanted a FredOC. I know you requested FredChloe, Bethie, but sadly Katherine was far more determined to hook up with darling Fred – so I compromised and included Chloe, I hope that's okay?

And, everybody else: holy shit, guys, nearly a hundred reviews already? I'm so grateful, I really can't thank you enough. You make writing these feel so worthwhile, and I really can't tell you how much I love you.

I promise the next one won't include Dominique and Lily _at all_, by the way. I feel I may be rather overloading you with them - I just can't help it, I love them too much!

**pairing**: FredKatherine  
**words**: 2613

* * *

**this is all  
**i can't do anything except be in love with you  
and all i do is miss you and the way we used to be  
_- Romeo and Juliet, The Killers_

_

* * *

_

He finds her on the deserted, frozen shore, the baby in her arms crying its eyes out; and he thinks that this really couldn't have gone worse if it had tried.

"I'm sorry," he says eventually, breaking the silence, and she turns slowly – probably knew he was there all along. He's always said she has eyes in the back of her head.

"What in particular are you sorry for, Fred?" she inquires shortly, only there's too much vulnerability in her voice for her to sound cross. "Out of all the long list of things you've done wrong – which one are you sorry for?"

His gazes dives downwards, to the bright-eyed child in her arms, with almost-dark skin and too-fair curls, and he sighs and his hands throw themselves upwards in a gesture of despair.

"For everything. I'm sorry for everything."

"You're always sorry," she replies, and then she turns away and starts walking back along the snowy beach, her head bent protectively over the child she's carrying as the wind whips her long curls backwards.

"No, Katherine, wait," Fred calls, and now he's jogging behind her, catching up to her and putting his hand on her arm, trying to halt her. "Please, Katie, please wait. Please."

"For what?" she inquires, and he's horrified – although not entirely surprised – to see that she's crying. "Wait for you to grow up and get your act together? You're twenty-four, Fred, you should be an adult already."

"I _am _an adult!" he cries, and now he's shouting and he doesn't entirely know why. "I am an adult, and you know I am!"

"Then start acting like one," she hisses, and he takes a step back, truly amazed by the venom in her voice.

"I thought Hufflepuffs were supposed to be forgiving," he calls after her, and she turns around and gathers the child more tightly to her breast.

"Hufflepuffs are loyal," she informs him tightly, and her scowl could darken the stars. "And I've just focused all my loyalty onto the one person who matters most."

"She's my daughter too, you know," Fred says sadly, one last-ditch attempt to save this, to salvage his relationship.

"Then you let me know when you're ready for the responsibility of being her father," Katherine replies in a low voice, and this time when she walks away Fred doesn't stop her.

* * *

He stays in his apartment for weeks, not answering the door or the telephone, just turning the engagement ring over and over in his fingers with crap Muggle television on in the background and a picture of his daughter on his dresser.

"Fred!" a voice yells from outside his front door one morning (or afternoon or evening – time has really stopped meaning very much these days), accompanied by loud banging. "Frederick George Weasley, you open up this door _right now _or we'll –"

He doesn't wait to find out what they're planning, just hastens to the door and yanks it open to discover himself faced with three of the people who strike the most fear into his heart out of everybody he knows.

"What's crackalackin', cuz?" Dominique inquires cheerily, brushing past him and making a face as she encounters the piles of mess in his hallway. "Jeez, they need Grimebusters in here."

"For Salazar's sake, Fred," Lily adds, her nose wrinkled in disgust as she follows her cousin, moving gingerly past a heap of unwashed laundry. "I think there's fungi growing on the fungi in here."

Roxanne makes no comment, just steps forward with her blue eyes full of concern and suddenly Fred's face is full of his twin's dark curls and he doesn't argue, just wraps his arms around her in return and breathes in the scent that has always been able to calm him.

"How you been, Freddie?" she asks gently, breaking apart from him and taking hold of his chin to turn his head from side to side and examine the bags under his eyes.

"Oh, you know, fine," he replies lightly, trying for nonchalance.

"Try that again, but with feeling this time," Lily says from where she's suddenly appeared in the kitchen doorway, and then shrieks loudly as sunlight floods the dark apartment.

"Jesus Christ, Dominique!" Roxanne yells, covering her eyes as they are all temporarily blinded. "Couldn't you be a little more gentle?"

"Good to see you remember those Muggle curses I taught you," Dominique replies brightly, appearing in the sitting room doorway, looking very pleased with herself. "I'm glad it wasn't a total waste of time teaching those to you."

"I still don't get why you taught them to us," Lily comments as the pair of them disappear into the kitchen, leaving Fred and Roxanne alone in the hallway.

"What happened?" Roxanne asks, looking around at the general squalor. "With Katherine, I mean. None of us have heard from her."

"She left," Fred says, and he thinks that the biggest achievement of his week is that his voice doesn't crack in those two words. "Took Rebecca and left."

"Oh, no," Roxanne breathes, and then Dominique and Lily are back in the hallway, ever the double-act, dragging the twins into the brightly-lit kitchen.

"We made coffee," Lily announces, pushing Fred down into a chair as Dominique thrusts a mug into his hands. "Now we need you to tell us what on Earth could be the reason for you becoming a nocturnal hermit for a month and a half."

"We would have come sooner," Dominique hastens to add, "but we got distracted because Vic is pregnant again."

"Again?" Fred asks incredulously, and suddenly he's distracted for the first time in a while. "Merlin, is she trying to have an entire Quidditch team or something?"

"Something like that," Roxanne replies wryly, taking a mug of her own and then glancing up at Lily and Dominique. "Katie left, guys," she informs them in an undertone, but she knows that Fred hears because his face falls and all his features just seem to close up again.

"Oh, Godric," Dominique exhales, sinking slowly into a chair. "Did she take Becca?"

Roxanne nods an affirmative, and then Lily is suddenly wrapping her arms around Fred's neck and pulling him close, patting his back tenderly. Roxanne moves to pry her away – Lily has always been a little in-your-face for Fred's liking – but to her surprise Fred's shoulders are suddenly shaking and he's crying into Lily's slim, pale shoulder, his arms going around her as he sobs.

"Oh, Freddie," she whispers, and then Dominique and Roxanne move over and join in the hug, patting any part of him they can reach and attempting to soothe him – because these four have stuck together through everything and even though they argue and bicker worse than even Lucy and Molly, when one of them hurts they all hurt.

"We're going to fix this," Dominique promises, and when Roxanne glances up both Dom and Lily are wearing that fiercely determined look that always results in something big happening. "Roxy will stay here with you, Fred, and me and Lily will go fix this."

"How?" Fred asks, and when he raises his face his eyes are red and blotchy and he looks dreadful but none of them even have the heart to tease him, he looks so distraught.

Lily and Dominique and Roxanne exchange a look, and then turn back to him with big grins.

"Chloe."

* * *

Lily barrels up the stairs to her best friend and sister-in-law's house, not even bothering to knock before bursting through into the hallway.

"Christ, Al!" she shrieks, covering her eyes as she discovers her brother half-naked on his way downstairs.

"Lily, what the fuck?" Al howls in reply, and Dominique calmly shoulders past Lily with her hands over her ears.

"I'd always forgotten how much you Potters enjoy breaking the sound barrier," she comments wearily, heading into the kitchen.

"What are you doing here?" Al demands, continuing down the stairs until he's standing right in front of his sister. "Did you even bother to knock?"

"I wanted to check if I was still as good at _Alohomora _as I used to be," Lily explains airily, tossing a jumper off the nearby radiator at him. "I am."

"You can't just barge in here," Al informs her angrily, pulling on the jumper as he follows her into the kitchen. "Not even in emergencies."

"Not even if one of our darling cousins has had his heart not only broken, but ripped apart and trampled on?" Lily inquires with a slight grin, accepting the mug of coffee that Chloe offers and collapsing into a chair.

Al looks briefly torn, and then sighs and goes over to help Chloe with the coffee, dropping a kiss onto her cheek and reaching up to get down the mugs that she can't quite reach.

"Ahh, domestic bliss," Dominique says with a hint of laughter in her voice from where she's sitting opposite Lily, watching the couple with her grey eyes dancing.

"Oh, because you'd know so much about that, right?" Chloe shoots back, grinning, reaching around Al to add milk to her coffee and then crossing the room to sit next to Dominique. "Right, what can I do for you ladies?"

"How do you know they're not here to see me?" Al asks, frowning falsely, moving to sit next to Lily.

"Oh, Al, you're so funny," Lily says, deadpan, shuffling her chair further away from him.

"I already told her we needed her help," Dominique explains, sticking her tongue out at Al. "So nyeh."

"Good to see you ladies are finally growing up," Al comments, feeling decidedly outnumbered as Chloe laughs, and goes to rise before Lily grabs him by the forearm, not afraid to dig her nails in. "Ouch! Godric, Lily, are you growing talons or something?"

"Katherine left Fred," Dominique says bluntly, distracting the siblings, and both Al and Chloe gasp in synch.

"Did she –" Chloe asks in a hushed tone, hand at her mouth.

"Take Becca? Yes she did," Lily interrupts, taking a big swallow of her coffee. "So we need you to get your feelers out, Chlo, see if you can track her down. You know more gossip than anyone we know, we figured you'd be our best bet."

"I'll get right on it," Chloe promises, rising from her chair and crossing over to her Muggle telephone, her long legs bare under the shirt that she's wearing.

"Oh, Merlin, is that Al's shirt?" Lily inquires in horror, shielding her eyes as she recognises the particularly violent zigzag pattern. "I would have thought more of you, Nott."

"It's Potter now," Chloe shoots back, grinning and giving her sister-in-law the finger. "You were my Maid of Honour, you should know this."

"I still stand by the fact that that's a dreadful cliché," Dominique announces as Chloe hastily taps in the first number on her list. "Slytherin and Gryffindor – I mean, _please_. Could you _be_ more Romeo-and-Juliet?"

"Hello, Scorpius and Rose," Lily butts in, turning to Al for back-up. "I still think they're the biggest cliché."

"Yeah, but at least they were both Gryffindor," Dominique points out, almost spilling her coffee as she gesticulates angrily. "So they don't have the whole fire-and-ice thing going on."

"Yeah, they _do_!" Lily retorts passionately, and if she was standing she'd definitely be stamping her foot by now. As it is, she contents herself with tossing her hair and slamming her fist down on the table.

"Really? How?" Dominique demands, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair as though nothing Lily says could change her mind.

"Because Scorpius is all cool-and-collected and Rose is all wild and – Al, you're best friends with them, you tell her!"

"Oh no, I'm not getting involved," Al protests, holding up his hands.

"_Albus_," Lily hisses, brows nearly meeting over her ferocious green eyes. "Tell Dominique that Scorpius and Rose are like Romeo and Juliet."

"I'm not –"

"All of you, _out_!" Chloe suddenly exclaims, the phone against her shoulder as she glares at them. "How do you expect me to find anything out with you three squabbling like grannies?"

"Hardly like grannies," Lily protests as the three of them rise, wiser than to toy with Chloe's temper. The argument continues as they wait in the sitting room, only diminishing when Chloe appears with a piece of paper covered in scribbles and an excited expression on her face.

"I know where she is."

* * *

The five of them stare at the green front door, unable to believe that something so plain and wooden could possibly be so scary.

"Man up, Fred," Lily says eventually, although she's shifting on the spot and her knuckles are white where she's clutching onto Chloe's sleeve, so he doesn't really see how she can say that without realising how hypocritical she's being.

"Ring the damn doorbell, Fred," Dominique complains, biting her nails and shivering as the cold Irish wind whips her red hair upwards. "I don't fancy turning into a human icicle."

"But what if she won't speak to me?" Fred asks plaintively, and Chloe sighs and steps forward, thumping her fist down onto the doorbell.

"There," she announces in exasperation. "It's done. Can we get back to my husband now, please? He's probably set fire to the kitchen or something."

Lily and Dominique shrug, whisper good lucks to Fred, and then the three of them disapparate. Roxanne stays for long enough to squeeze Fred's hand and wish him luck, and then she too disapparates.

Fred gulps as the door swings open, and as Katherine swings into view with Rebecca on her hip, he remembers what Dominique had instructed him to do and gets down on one knee, ignoring the damp cold that spreads through him as his jeans come into contact with the snow.

"I'm so sorry, Katie," he says, reaching up to take her free hand. "I've been an idiot and a child and I'm _sorry_. I don't know what else to do to tell you that."

She stares down at him, her hand still in his, and there is something warring in her green eyes as she considers him, Becca burbling chirpily in her arms.

"How did you find me?" she asks eventually, and he shifts against the cold ground and shrugs.

"My family know everything between them."

She stands there a little while longer, frowning slightly, and then Becca seems to clock the identity of the man on his knees in front of her door and stretches out her arms to him, shrieking happily.

"Dada! Dada!"

"Baby," Fred breathes, standing up and reaching towards her. Katherine relinquishes her reluctantly, letting him dandle her in his arms and hold her tightly, inhaling her sweet scent and examining how much she's grown and kissing her fair curls.

"I'm sorry," he repeats to Katherine, shifting Rebecca into one arm to glide his fingers against Katherine's cheek. "I love you so much. I never want to be parted from you again."

"You, Fred Weasley, are an _idiot_," she says thickly, sounding like she's swallowing back tears, and then suddenly she's throwing herself at him and wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him harder than a ten-tonne truck crashes into a rock.

"Never leave me again," he murmurs against her mouth, and when she draws back her green eyes are dancing and her sandy curls are streaming over all three of them and she's biting her bottom lip in that way he loves so.

"Okay," she whispers, and then she's dragging him back inside, Rebecca giggling with delight at having her parents back together again, Fred feeling like he's going to burst with the relief of it all.

* * *

**a/n**: if you like this enough to favourite/alert, I beg you not to do so without reviewing!


	9. LouisChloe

**a/n**: for AccioHope, who is a brilliant reviewer and wanted a LouisChloe with the prompt _ice_. I honestly thought it would be longer than this, Hope, but apparently Louis and Chloe are only after a quickie. (I ship Chloe hardest with James Sirius or Albus, I'm afraid!)

I initially had a problem with this chapter because I tend to see Louis as the youngest child by a large margin – i.e. about twelve years younger than Dominique (I imagine Fleur and Bill having their children really far apart so they can spoil them separately) – which would have screwed up trying to pair him with my OCs. So I ended up putting him in the same year as Lucy and Molly, and occasionally Lysander and Lorcan (the twins float between years depending on my mood), and the year above Dominique, Lily, Hugo, Roxanne and Fred. So he's the middle child.

Apologies for that essay, you didn't really need to know that. But I wanted you to anyway.

**pairing**: LouisChloe  
**words**: 913

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**totalitarianism**  
andrew's a starfighter pilot  
he knows all the girls in the world  
_- Starfighter Pilot, Snow Patrol_

_

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_

In hindsight, getting involved with Lysander's clearly foolhardy scheme hadn't been the best of ideas.

But then Chloe's never prided herself on knowing which ideas are the good ones to pick.

However, being shoved unceremoniously into detention isn't turning out too badly. Even though she, Lily, Dominique, and Lysander have all been placed in separate detentions, Chloe feels there is still an opportunity for fun.

Even if that fun will, regretfully, involve polishing trophies until her fingers bleed.

"So," she says eventually, and her voice is too loud in the silence of the arching room. "Come here often?"

Her detention teammate pokes his head around a cup for Potions brilliance and awards her a long, hard glare before disappearing again.

"Oh, excellent, we're doing this the _fun _way, then," Chloe sighs, picking up a plaque and rubbing polish haphazardly all over it. "Great. Just like I hoped."

There is another stretching silence as Chloe makes a half-hearted attempt to clean the plaque and listens to her co-worker moving around on the other side of the stack of trophies in the centre of the room.

"You know, Lily always said you were icy-quiet. The amount of girls I've seen you with, I was inclined to disagree, but now –"

"Do you _ever _stop talking?" he inquires finally, moving around and into a slanting beam of moonlight, his blonde hair catching the light with little shimmers of silver.

"Rarely," Chloe replies cheerfully, abandoning her plaque on a spare table and brandishing her cleaning cloth like a pro as she picks up an obnoxiously large cup. "It's one of my many charms."

"Wonderful," he replies wearily, reaching to pick up a silver dish and starting to polish it. Chloe blows her fringe out of her eyes as she realises that she is doubtless going to be the one making conversation.

"So what happened to Katherine Finnegan? You two were going out, weren't you?"

He awards her another look, his ice-blue eyes unimpressed under his fringe. Chloe utilises this opportunity to admire and envy his cheekbones, and to think that almost all of him is about ice, this beautiful boy, with his blueblue eyes and Arctic wit.

"We _were_," he replies, stressing the past tense. "But she fancies Fred, so… well, I don't play consolation prize – especially for one of my cousins."

"Oh, but Louis," Chloe protests, sending him a falsely smouldering look from under her lashes. "You're part _Veela_. You would _never _play consolation prize."

"Are you flirting with me, Nott?" he inquires lazily, one eyebrow raising, and Chloe laughs and dumps her trophy randomly down on the pile, moving closer yet to him and sending him another long-lashed look.

"Maybe," she replies in a low voice, blinking slowly. "I might even be that bored."

"Oh, I see, so I'm an attempt to alleviate boredom?" he asks with a playful note in his tone, and Chloe rolls her eyes because Weasleys just have this _thing _about being unable to take anything seriously.

"Well, I'm sure your almost _painful _good-looks have nothing to do with it either," she retorts, turning away and disappearing around the stack of trophies to hide herself from his view. "Because, you know, that would just be ridiculous."

"Careful, Nott, I can feel my ego expanding by the second," he replies, and she rolls her eyes from the safety of her hiding place and sighs loudly.

"Could it really expand any further without making you a wide load?" she inquires, and she hears his low laughter and cannot deny that he really does have a very sexy laugh. Which Lily would totally kill her for thinking, but there you go. A girl can't be perfect.

"I like you," he says suddenly, appearing almost beside her without her knowing how he's done it. "You're not brainless like the rest."

"Oh, that's a sweeping generalisation," Chloe protests, thinking about taking a step back but deciding against it because from this point she can see the lines of his muscles under his shirt. "All the girls in my year – and your year, come to think of it – aren't totally stupid."

"No, but the non-stupid ones are either related to me or dating somebody who's related to me," he informs her validly, and Chloe shrugs and casually lifts up another cup.

"What a high opinion you have of the female sex," she teases, and he moves closer and gently takes the cup from her hands. Chloe's eyes widen in delight and she flicks her hair back neatly over one shoulder. "Oh, I say, we're at that level in our relationship already, are we?"

"Shut up, Sixth Year," Louis orders with a slight grin, placing the cup down on a table and moving to take her in his arms.

"I'm sure there are rules about this, you know," Chloe murmurs as he angles his head towards hers. "Oh, and don't you dare use any of your Veela voodoo crap on me. I've seen what Dom can do to boys."

"Wouldn't dream of it," he mutters, chuckling, and then abruptly his mouth is fastening onto hers and, in between drowning in desire, Chloe decides that Lily is not only going to kill her, but kill her and then bring her back to life so she can kill her _again _and _again _and _again_.

But his hand is already slipping to the buttons on her shirt, and Chloe consoles herself with the fact that this is most certainly worth death.

* * *

**a/n**: if you liked this enough to favourite/alert, please don't do so without reviewing, thank you!


	10. RoxanneScorpius

**a/n**: for xAccioPencil, a great reviewer who requested a ScorpiusRoxanne with the prompt _music_. I hope you like it!

Again, thank you for all the reviews, guys, they mean the world to me. I hope you all had lovely Christmases!

Now, I'm going to shamelessly pimp my friend Mesteria's new Next-Gen Harry Potter RPG. It needs more members and it's great fun. She's put a lot of hard work into it and I want it to be busier! The link is on my profile if you're interested – everyone from OCs to canon characters are accepted! So go, my lovely readers, go join!

**pairing**: ScorpiusRoxanne  
**words**: 1143

* * *

**the unexpected sort of relationship  
**touch me 'cause i can't move  
i can barely breathe  
_- Fifteen Minutes Old, Snow Patrol_

_

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_

Roxanne has a secret.

It's not a world-ending or life-threatening one or anything. It's just a little bizarre and she has quite enough bizarre in her life without adding to it, thank you very much.

The secret involves the piece of Muggle technology stashed beneath her bed in her dormitory with the earphones and the Jurassic-era CD compartment. Another part of the secret involves the stack of Muggle CDs hidden next to the piece of technology; and then the final part of the secret is that she pulls out both other parts when she has time alone and she plugs herself in and she listens and listens and listens and doesn't stop until she is disturbed.

And, okay, it's just music – but it's all about the Wrock these days and if people knew you were completely fangirling over some Muggle band you'd be considered at the very least desperate.

So Roxanne keeps her music tastes to herself and uses the few opportunities that she is granted, being best friends with Lily and Dominique and Chloe, and she listens.

* * *

She risks taking her CD outside one fine summer's day when Lily is off getting in trouble somewhere with the other two and Fred is with his girlfriend, finding herself a spot on the bank of the lake and stretching back to let her tanned skin drink up the strong sun, music floating up through the wires and into her ears.

"Oh, Weasley," a voice says, disturbing her from her reverie, and Roxanne tugs the earphones out instantly and groans as she recognises Scorpius Malfoy, the collective Weasley nemesis.

"What the fuck d'you want, Scorpius?"

"Don't try to be spiteful, Weasley, it doesn't suit you," Scorpius replies drolly, sinking down next to her. "I just wanted to know what you're listening to."

"Nothing you'd be interested in," Roxanne replies, lying expertly (being friends with Lily and Chloe has certainly paid off) and casually shuffling her walkman into her bag. "What are you doing out here?"

"Enjoying the sun," he replies, and Roxanne doubts that but accepts it.

"Okay then," she says disinterestedly, but she's never been good at being unfriendly and he looks kind of miserable so she sighs and leans back onto the ground, her fingers threading through the grass.

A shadow falls across her, and suddenly he's lying down next to her, and Roxanne doesn't know how it's happened but their hands are almost touching, his skin a mere whisper from hers.

"I'm sorry about Lily and Dom's prank on you the other day," Roxanne says suddenly, turning her head and shielding her eyes from the sun so she can look at him properly. "It was mean."

He shrugs and his profile is very handsome in the bright daylight. "S'okay. I'm used to it now."

"Yeah, but that still doesn't excuse it," Roxanne replies, and this time she moves her hand deliberately so that her little finger is most _definitely _touching his. "I'm sorry, I really am. I try to get them to tone it down, but… well, they're Weasleys through-and-though."

"How are you so _nice_?" he inquires, and he sounds really and truly amazed. "You're a _Weasley_. A _Gryffindor_ Weasley."

"Well you're a Gryffindor Malfoy," Roxanne replies, turning her head and meeting his eyes quite unexpectedly, stormy-skies-grey into shallow-ocean-blue.

"Fair point," he says with a slight chuckle, turning his face back up to stare at the few clouds that are scudding across the sky. "I still don't know why that happened."

Roxanne smiles and mimics him, returning her eyes to the sky. "I guess the Hat saw something worthy of Gryffindor in you, huh?"

He shrugs and she – impossibly – thinks he might even be _smiling_.

"I'm glad mini-Potter went into Slytherin, you know," he comments suddenly, almost out-of-the-blue. "People bother less with me being in Gryffindor now."

"Lily's certainly a distraction," Roxanne replies with a sigh, and she's thinking very unfriendly thoughts about how it all seems to boil down to Lily or to Dominique or to one of her other relatives with all the boys they know.

She shuts her eyes to try to block out the mean thoughts, but they flash open again as her world darkens. She discovers Scorpius leaning over her, his grey eyes faintly amused as his hair flops onto his forehead, his head blocking out the sun.

"You don't need to be jealous of her, you know," he tells her gently, and now his hand is not only grazing hers but _covering _it, and she'd be awfully grateful if her heart could just be marginally less pathetic and stop beating so fast. "I mean, she's attention-grabbing sure, but you – you've got the most distinctive looks of any girl I've seen and I don't think you need to worry about Lily outshining you."

"…Thank you?" Roxanne says, trying to figure out if this is a compliment or not. She flushes slowly, aware that as this is Scorpius Malfoy, it probably is one of his rarer-than-snow-leopards compliments.

"Seriously," he presses, and now his fingers are gliding up to just barely touch her glossy curls. "I mean, you've got nice skin and pretty dark hair and your eyes are so _blue_, you know?"

"Scorpius Malfoy, you sap," she says in amazement, fake-slapping his arm, and he grins self-consciously and shrugs.

"My cousin Chloe gave me this book "Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches," he informs her, and there might even be a hint of a blush darkening his cheekbones. "She said I definitely needed it."

"I have to agree with her," Roxanne says, laughing. "But why are you bothering to use it on me?"

"You know, Roxanne," he says, and now he's extending his hand out to help her to sit up, "You don't see yourself clearly at all, do you?"

"What do you –" she begins, but then suddenly she's interrupted because, sweet Merlin's underpants, he's _kissing _her, actually _kissing _her, and Roxanne doesn't know what to do with herself so she just wraps her arms tightly around his neck and kisses him back because he's Scorpius Malfoy and he's a damn _good _kisser.

Not that she'd tell him that, of course, his ego is big enough as it is.

* * *

They become a _thing _and it's undeniable that they look good together – he all blonde and pale and iceiceice, she all dark hair and dark skin and firefirefire – and even her cousins have to agree that they work together nicely, balancing each other out. And, unbelievably, Scorpius really does _love _her.

They go out on walks together, plugged into Roxanne's CD walkman, and she introduces him to her favourite Muggle bands and he introduces her to his favourite Muggle authors and they just work, somehow.

(We don't have to psycho-analyse everything - some things just _are_. And, you know, these are the things that work best.)

* * *

**a/n**: if you liked this enough to favourite/alert, please don't do so without reviewing, thank you!


	11. MollyTeddy

**a/n**: this one wasn't requested, but for some reason I needed to write it.

Well, I lie, BlueEyes444 requested this pairing, but she wanted the prompt _death_ which I forgot to use, so – Blue, I will write you another pairing with _death_, I promise!

For Amy, to read while she does her knitting.

**pairing**: TeddyMolly  
**words**: 1958

* * *

**be the lightening in me  
**i want to see you as you are now  
every single day that i am living  
_- What If This Storm Ends, Snow Patrol_

_

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There are days when she catches his eye and it's almost (not really) like he could love her if he tried hard enough.

But trying is for Hufflepuffs and Teddy is a Gryffindor through-and-through, and Gryffindors never try. They do, or they don't. But they don't just _try_.

Trying implies giving up, and in this crazy world of theirs giving up is just not an option. Because they're _the_ _young ones_, the Next Generation, the children of heroes who are expected to grow up too fast and live too perfectly and not ever make a mistake or set a(n expensively shoed) foot wrong.

Lily falls first.

(They're all almost _proud_ of her.)

Then it's Hugo's turn – only he doesn't fall, not in normal terms. Because, you see, the boy has the voice of an angel and there's no place for an innocent like him in the rough and dirty world of wizard Wrock. So he turns to the Muggle music scene and he puts himself a band together, and out of the shadow of his famous Wizarding family he explodes like a supernova onto the stage of Muggle fame.

The rest of them battle onwards with their youthful shoulders bowed and laughter in their hearts, because this is one of those laugh-or-you'll-cry situations.

Molly, darling Molly with her morals all askew and her quest for perfection grounded (hello, Houston? I think there's been a mistake) – well, she was a drama queen from the very start and it's not a hard push to keep the act up well into her late teens and early twenties.

She wears her tattoo like a skin-bound secret, covering it up but using the knowledge of its existence to burn brightbrightbright – _look at me, I'm not like them, I'm me and I'm Molly and I'm not just a second-hand name _– and wearing them out with her blazing schemes and determined cheeriness and firm independence.

"Molly."

His voice is rough and low in the darkness of the kitchen, and she swings around quickly, her hair flying out and catching the candlelight in little glimmers of copper.

"Teddy," she whispers back, acutely conscious of the sleeping multitude above them, the glass of milk in her hands clutched so tightly her knuckles are almost the same colour as the liquid inside. "What are you doing down?"

"I could ask you the same," he replies, and there's a hint of teasing in his voice as he steps forward into the small circle of light, his eyes blue tonight.

"I asked first," she retorts, and she hates him (not really) because he reduces her to childish tactics and he knows it too.

"Yes, I suppose you did," he replies with a small smile, crossing over to the tap and filling up a glass of water before collapsing down into one of the kitchen chairs. "I'm down because Lily and Dominique are hogging the bed."

"You're sharing with Lily and Dom?" Molly inquires in slight surprise, and her lips twist upwards. "My aunts and uncles place a lot of trust in you."

He grins now, broadly and unreservedly, that easy smile so contagious Molly can feel one – despite her best interests – tugging at her own lips.

"Well, it was that or share with Victoire, and you can imagine how well _that _went down. 'Sides, we've got James and Louis on the floor, so there'll be no tomfoolery, even if I had wanted there to be."

"Tomfoolery?" she repeats, and yeah that's _so _not the most important part of what he's just said, but whatever, okay? "Who even _says _tomfoolery anymore?"

"I do," he informs her blithely, stretching his long legs out in front of himself and yawning hugely, ruffling his hair absently. "And you haven't told me why _you're _down here."

"Couldn't sleep," she says shortly, finally plucking up the courage to move across the room and take a seat opposite him. "Lucy's snoring."

"I thought I heard her on my way down," he observes, trying unsuccessfully to stifle laughter. "She's _loud_."

"Hence my awake-ness," Molly replies pointedly, going to rise and return to bed, pointless as the mission to get more sleep is.

"No, wait," Teddy urges, going to grasp her hand but obviously thinking better of it as she arches a practised eyebrow at his approaching fingers. "Stay with me. It's dreadfully dull down here by myself."

"Glad I can be useful to you," Molly replies slowly, sitting back down despite herself and taking a long gulp of her milk. "I guess it's good to know I'm good for something."

"You do make good conversation," Teddy teases, glancing sidelong at her before changing his hair to a wild fuchsia and picking up a stray spoon to examine his reflection.

Molly watches him change his hair to multiple different colours in complete silence, but then her voice breaks the silence quietly.

"Do you take requests?" she asks, her voice gently teasing, and his now-jade green eyes flash across to meet her hazel ones, crinkled round the edges in that way she (_adores_)… finds sweet.

"That depends on your request," he answers, and his tone is playful and Molly is forced to come to the conclusion that there is a very real possibility that he might actually be flirting with her.

"Do Professor Hewer," she demands, referencing the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts, and then sits and watches, enraptured, as Teddy frowns and then gradually morphs into a duplicate of her DADA professor. "Not bad," she compliments, grinning broadly at the sight.

"It's not perfect," he says, shrugging, and his voice is still _TeddyTeddyTeddy _and she doesn't know why it makes her limbs go weak. "I don't really study people enough for them to be really good."

"Can you do Hugo?" she inquires, because okay, she'll admit it, she misses her kid cousin like crazy and she wishes he could take time out of his tour and just visit them, just for one day.

Teddy awards her a curious look, and then with a shrug he morphs into Hugo, and the likeness is better than that of the DADA teacher. He's all curly hair and blue eyes and rosy cheeks, and Molly misses him suddenly and terribly.

"Change back," she commands, and she's grateful that her voice doesn't break because now is a slightly weird time to get upset about Hugo, because okay the boy was younger than her, but he was also always the sweet one, the kind one, the caring one, and Molly hates that their parents' fame has destroyed that part of him.

But Teddy isn't changing back to his usual handsome, brown-haired self. Instead his hair is lengthening and his body is thinning and his face is turning more angular and _pretty _and the hair is red and –

A perfect replica of herself sits across the table, watching her quietly from focused hazel eyes, red hair curling down her back in the same way, a smug little smile sitting on her – _his _– lips.

"Not bad," Molly informs him once she can speak again, leaning closer to examine his handiwork. "You've even got the mole underneath my ear."

He smiles widely and Molly finds it utterly bizarre watching herself pick up the spoon again and peer interestedly into the back of it.

"I think this is my best one yet," he says, and even his voice is different – higher and sweeter and closer to her own. "I mean, I think I've really got the details on this one."

Molly smiles suddenly, privately, and without warning rises to her feet and, without giving him an explanation, crosses around to stand behind him and pull sharply at the collar of his t-shirt, too big on his girl-frame, examining the flawless skin of his shoulder.

"Not all of the details," she replies with a smirk, and then she's sat back in her seat before he has a chance to react. He fades back into himself, and when he's Teddy again there is a distinct look of annoyance on his face.

"What did I miss?" he inquires, and he looks genuinely irritated by this. In reply, she merely takes another gulp of milk and sits there just _looking _at him. "C'mon, Molly, please?" he says, and she's not going to say it but (she really likes hearing him beg).

"Okay then," he says suddenly, and is it just her or is his voice a few shades lower than before? "We'll play this your way."

Suddenly he's on his feet and he's moving around the table with that strange, loping grace of his, and then he's standing behind her and all the hairs on the back of her neck are standing up.

"What are you –" she begins, but then his fingertips are dragging across the silky skin at the base of her neck, pulling her hair aside to tumble unrestrained over her shoulder, leaving her back exposed and open to him.

She stifles a gasp of pleasure as his fingers run lower, hooking into the edge of her pyjama top and dragging it sideways, his breath hot on her scalp as she feels his warm presence behind her, her eyes locked with a fiery fascination on a knot in the woodwork of the table in front of her.

He pulls her top aside agonisingly slowly, and Molly's eyelids lower in half-expectation and half-bliss, the feeling of his rough fingertips against her satiny skin like some strange infernal combination of hell and heaven all at once.

"Well, hello, little tattoo," he says suddenly, and his chuckle ghosts over her shoulder as he bends to examine the curling script more closely. "I didn't know you were there."

"I'm saving it to show to Dad when he's really pissing me off," Molly explains, and she wishes he would just move away a little so she could catch her breath and not sound like she's just run a marathon. "But I'm hiding it until then."

"So it's a secret?" he says, and she doesn't dare turn her head to look at his face.

"Deadly secret," she replies, and that low chuckle resonates through her again, until suddenly the foreign feeling of his lips pressing against the middle of the sentence inked into her shoulder makes her jump and then stiffen instantly.

"I like it," Teddy says, pulling his mouth away from the blue writing. "I think it's very clever."

"Thank you," she breathes, and then she turns in her chair and looks up at him where he's looming above her, his eyes a blazing shade of gold that she's never seen before. "Lily and I came up with it together."

His hands are suddenly at her elbows, lifting her up until she's seated on the edge of the kitchen table, and his hair is flickering through so many colours it's almost nauseating.

His fingers trace the patterns of her face slowly, and she doesn't dare even make a whisper of a sound as he studies by touch the planes of her features, the curve of her lips, the curl of her longlong lashes.

"You knew me perfectly," she says suddenly, something occurring to her. "You couldn't do Hugo or Professor Hewer anywhere near perfectly. But you knew me."

"Yes," he says, and the sound that comes out of his mouth is halfway between prayer and confession. "I knew you."

And then his fingers are sliding backwards into her hair and his mouth is coming to meet hers firmly, a low moan escaping him and tumbling onto her tongue as he presses himself desperately against her, her legs locking around his waist as her arms slide around his neck.

(In the end, she's the one who begs, but that's not an important detail.)

* * *

**a/n**: if you liked this enough to favourite/alert, please don't do so without reviewing, thank you!


	12. JamesKatherine

**a/n**: so my last first-person chapter seemed to be oddly popular. I'm not going to complain about that – instead I'm going to cash in on it! So I've written another first-person. It's with James, however, not Lily, and I don't know whether I've managed to get his 'voice' down very well. I feel less comfortable writing him than Lily.

But then, I know Lily pretty well, and I don't know James at all! So… tell me what you think?

**pairing**: JamesKatherine  
**words**: 2573

* * *

**Speculation  
**there will be lots for them to talk about  
there'll be trouble when the kids come out  
_- Kidz, Take That_

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* * *

_

Okay, to start, I want to establish that this is not my fault. For once, I have actually had nothing to do with the fact that I am now stuck in detention for an indeterminate number of hours with my little sister, her infuriating friend, and a variety of my relatives.

"I hate you," I comment to Lily, because it is in actual fact _her _fault that we are here. She just laughs, which is kind of annoying.

Maybe I should explain the reasons I'm in detention. Might make it a bit easier for you to follow.

So there I am this morning looking particularly handsome, my hair ruffled in that devil-may-care attitude that has girls swooning for me left, right, and centre.

I am a gleaming specimen of manhood, my Quidditch captain badge gleaming on my chest, my eyes bright with the joy of living, my uniform hanging off my muscular frame in that perfectly nonchalant manner. In short, I am looking like pretty hot stuff.

Lily, naturally, does not appreciate my especial handsomeness, and throws a bread roll at me from the Slytherin table. I catch it neatly and present it on one bended knee, with a flourish, to a third year Gryffindor girl who blushes and giggles.

Yes, my friends, James Potter is a king among men, a shining example of British boyhood.

"Hurry your ugly arse up, Potter," someone calls (shrieks) to me from further up the table, and with a sigh, I wink at the third year and get to my feet, pacing in my graceful way down to the charming owner of the shriek.

"Jenny," I chide gently, schooling my features into a mask of disappointment as I take my seat, piling my plate instantly with any food within reach. "It is not polite to yell over the pleasant conversation of those around you."

"Oh, give it a rest," my best friend replies impatiently. I note that she is looking particularly frazzled this morning.

"You look particularly frazzled this morning."

"That's because we've got a test period four in Defence," she informs me, glaring. "Or did you forget?"

I have, of course, forgotten, but I don't need to give her the satisfaction of knowing that.

"Don't be stupid," I reply as though she is a few players short of a Quidditch team, "I am fully prepared."

"No, you're an arse," she corrects me, and I shoot her a hurt look before starting to shovel food into my mouth.

"So what's the best magic to do when you've got four men coming at you from one side, and five coming at you from the other?" she presses, and I shrug and swallow my mouthful of sausage.

"Disapparition," I reply – and you must admit, I make a fair point. But she gives me her disappointed sigh and returns her attention to her stupidly large textbook.

I don't even know why I hang out with her.

When she is eventually finished with her nagging and I have expertly cleared my plate, we leave the Great Hall and proceed to Potions.

I am an exceptionally gifted potion maker, just so you know. Dad says I get it from my grandmother.

(Actually I think I get it from Jenny, because I just copy everything she does, but that is a _teeny tiny _detail.)

True to form, this morning we team up as usual and go to reclaim our cauldron of half-made Felix Felicis and begin work on it.

"I think I'm doing a rather brilliant job with this," I announce to her cheerily, poking at the mixture with a silver spoon. "I mean, it's doing everything the textbook says it should be doing."

She looks up from chopping gurdyroots and glares.

"Yes, James, you are a _genius _at potions," she replies (I think the tone of sarcasm is thoroughly unnecessary) and returns to her chopping.

"I knew you appreciated me," I tell her merrily, welling up with excitement because she's beginning to get that glint in her eye that means I'm getting to her. This is a definite result. Usually she's more easygoing than this.

"Fuck off," she hisses at me, and I place my hands over my heart and assume my best hurt expression.

"Oh, Jenny," I exclaim desolately, trying extremely hard to summon some crocodile tears. "You're so _cruel_."

"You know, some days I really hate you," she comments, and I grin and hurry around the table to give her my best James-bear-hug.

"Love you too, Jen."

"Urgh, piss off," she complains, wriggling to get free. I know she loves me really, so I cling on for dear life.

Naturally, in the ensuing struggle, we knock over the cauldron of our partners and there is a brief explosion that results in four of us standing there looking like victims of a nuclear war.

There is a long silence.

"Well clearly their potion was wrong," I announce eventually. "Because it is definitely _not_ supposed to explode if you crash into it."

"Potter, Rogers, _detention_," the teacher says, icily calm. I spare a moment to be impressed by his self-control before beginning my campaign of sympathy.

"Oh, but _sir_," I protest, "It _clearly_ wasn't our fault! Their potion was too close to ours and besides it _shouldn't_ have exploded, it should have been –"

"_Get out of my classroom_!" the teacher screams, and with a hearty sigh I trudge wearily out of the room, blowing a kiss to Jenny and gathering up my books.

James Potter is too man for that professor to handle, this much is now clear to me.

I think I'm supposed to wait outside the classroom or something, so naturally I head straight up towards the Gryffindor common room. Halfway there I bump into Lily, who is suspiciously not in lessons, and doubly suspiciously crouched with Dominique and Chloe, peering around a corner and looking like they are fighting to control laughter.

"Lily," I say warningly, and two seconds later when I am being pinned down by three fourth year girls, I come to the conclusion that the sensible option might have been to just walk on by. Curse my debonair curiosity.

"Shut up," Dominique hisses in my ear, and she looks so fierce I worry she might sit on my head or something.

"Then tell me what you're up to!" I whisper back, forming a very impressive scowl, glaring at her.

Lily, from where she is sitting on my midriff to hold me down, pipes up, "Not unless you swear not to tell on us."

I shoot her a hurt look around Dominique's stranglehold on me. "My dearest Lily-flower," I say in an injured tone, "You know I would _never _tell on you."

Chloe snorts with laughter from where she is sitting on my legs, and I experience a pang of sadness for the clear lack of respect their generation has for its elders.

"Yeah, okay, I'll believe that when the sky turns green," Lily replies, but she lets me up anyway and Dominique and Chloe release their holds somewhat reluctantly. I make a great show of stretching and gasping with relief, until Chloe remarks worriedly, "Are you about to throw up or something?"

It is worth noting that she is only worried because I might be sick on her shoes which, from what I gather from their babbled conversations, are rather expensive.

"If I was I'd aim for you," I inform her in a friendly manner that will doubtless have her swooning for me. She kicks me in the thigh and gives me a dead leg.

She should be on the Slytherin Quidditch team. She has _mean _aim.

"We're spying on Professor Norton," Dominique informs me in a whisper, dragging me up to peer around the corner. "We think he might be conducting an illicit affair with one of the Seventh-Year girls."

"You know he's going out with Professor McAllister?" I remind them, feeling slightly uncomfortable to have my personal space invaded by three fourteen-to-fifteen-year-olds.

"So?" Lily hisses, and I sigh my disappointed sigh (I learnt it off Jenny) and shake my head.

"So maybe he believes in fidelity?" I continue, trying very hard, determined that they will, by the end of this little voyeur-session, have at least some moral integrity shoved into them.

They just laugh.

Little bastards.

"I dislike you all intensely," I inform them, still not entirely sure why I'm still here, and then jump almightily as a new someone – or rather, three new someones – arrive behind me.

"What's happening?" one of them inquires in a hiss, and I turn to discover myself faced with two more cousins – Fred and Lucy – and a vaguely familiar Hufflepuff girl I register as being a friend of Lucy's.

She is extremely hot, so I plaster on my best Casanova smile and hold out my hand to her.

"Hi, I'm James," I tell her in a low voice (I am one smooth guy) and shake her hand. She blushes and looks at her feet. Why are Hufflepuffs so fucking bashful?

"Katie," she replies, and I widen my smile until Lily gives me a sharp elbow in the side.

"Focus, idiot," she commands, and we all dutifully peer around the corner again. Unfortunately, Professor Norton has evidently registered our presence (I don't get how, I think we were being extremely unobtrusive) and is standing, hands on hips, glaring at us.

I don't know whether to be more mortified by the fact that we've got caught or that fact that I have been discovered hanging out with a bunch of fourth years.

I am just concocting a really good reason for us all being there when someone (I suspect Lily) gives me an almighty shove from behind and I go sprawling out into the middle of the corridor, right into the professor's line of vision, as I hear them all scampering away like the infuriating little rats they are.

"I was trying to stop them," I inform Norton graciously, clambering to my feet and brushing myself off with all my usual poise. "They were quite clearly misbehaving, but I wanted to figure out what they were up to before I exposed them for their gross misconduct.

He pauses to think about that, looking very thoughtful, and then smiles tightly at me. "Detention, for all of you," he says cheerfully, and then he disappears off down the corridor.

Stupid, smarmy, smug git. I don't know why all the girls fancy him.

Anyway, I soon discover the band of losers sitting in a deserted classroom, having a good laugh, and burst right into the middle of their cosy little chit-chat.

"We're all in detention," I inform them brightly – I was already in detention, after all, it's not going to affect me that much. "So congrats."

Chloe wordlessly produces a piece of paper from somewhere (I suspect her bra, but if I say anything I'll be accused of being a pervert) and makes a line on one side with a pencil.

"What's that?" Lily inquires, leaning over to examine it. Chloe holds it up to show the room at large how she has drawn a large line down the middle, and is tallying something up.

"This side is counting the number of detentions I earn by myself," she announces, pointing. "And this side is the number of detentions I earn when I'm with a Weasley and/or a Potter."

We all squint at it.

The 'self-made' detention side has one single line. The 'Potter-Weasley' side is almost full.

That probably tells you everything you need to know about my family.

So, anyway, we disperse with grumblings about detention (on their part – I'm James Potter, and I am above grumbling) and reconvene that evening in the Transfiguration classroom where Professor Norton normally teaches.

"Sit down," he says shortly, and I sit feeling more sheepish than, well, a sheep, because I am the oldest person in the room by at least a year.

I blame Lily.

I inform her of this once Norton has handed out our work for detention, scribbling on a scrap of parchment and lobbing at her head. Norton (extremely stupidly, in my less-than-humble opinion) leaves us to it.

"Probably gone to have it on with a Hufflepuff seventh year," Dominique comments darkly, and Lily and Chloe explode into giggles.

I put my head into my hands and feel like crying.

I am well-behaved, for once, and as a reward I am let out early with Katie for company, as we were the only two who didn't knock something over/break something/hex a family member.

You'd think the teachers at this school would have learnt by now not to enclose more than three Weasley-Potters in a room alone together by now.

Anyway, we stroll along the corridors on our merry way, and I'm considering just bursting out into "We're off to see the wizard" to lighten the mood, but she probably wouldn't get it and it would, frankly, be a total waste of energy on my part.

"I like your… shoes…" I comment eventually, when the awkward silence is becoming too strained for me to bear – which is an achievement, I rarely find situations that are too awkward for my liking.

"Thank you," she mutters, blushing. Yes, James Potter, you slick worker. She will be putty in your hands by the end of this walk. "I like your… jumper."

I am not wearing a jumper, but I will let this one slide.

"So you're Lucy's friend?" I inquire cheerily, hooking a friendly arm around her shoulders.

"Obviously," she replies, moving my arm deliberately _off _her shoulders. "And don't try any of your player stuff on me, okay? I've heard all about you from Lucy."

"Lucy lies," I tell her firmly, and consider just dragging her into a broom cupboard for a good snog. That will change her mind. "All the time."

This is about as far from the truth as you can get, but let it never be said that James Sirius Potter is a poor liar.

"You know what?" she says thoughtfully, pausing to look up at me. "I don't believe you."

"Fine, don't believe me," I reply in my best impression of Lily, getting the huff down to a T. "I still know you fancy me anyway."

"I do _not _fancy you!" she exclaims, but I can see her eyes trying _not _to look at my lips and oh, if there's one thing James Potter has learnt about romance it's that looking at the lips is a definite sign of attraction.

Also, I think I need to stop referring to myself in the third person.

So, naturally, I grab her and snog the living daylights out of her.

I think she'd like to pretend she's not liking it, but actually she's completely kissing me back. Little faker.

"Liar," I tell her when I pull back, and then with a wink and a peck on the cheek for luck, I saunter off down the hallway and head back up to the Gryffindor Tower.

Whether it is a natural extension of my extreme good-looks or suave charm I shall never know, but I think I am a very good reader of women. A regular Casanova. Even prim-and-proper Katherine Finnegan cannot resist my manly magnetism, as is proven by our meetings in various broom cupboards which have become regular bi-weekly occurrences several days later.

Yes, folks, James Sirius Potter is definitely one smooth worker.

* * *

**a/n**: if you liked this enough to favourite/alert, please don't do so without reviewing, thank you!


	13. HugoJenny

**a/n**: Happy New Year, everyone!

I promise to not do any OCs for a while – it's just I'm getting into the groove of writing the Next-Generation Weasley boys and am finding plenty of inspiration for them and their various other halves, but none for the other pairings. I am dreadfully sorry!

**pairing**: HugoJenny  
**words**: 3000

* * *

**the weight of water  
**what's the matter, matter  
blue eyes, blue eyes  
_- Blue Eyes, Mika_

* * *

For a moment the thud of his heart and the rasp of his breathing is louder than the roar of the crowd in front of the stage. Adrenaline courses through him thicker than sin, setting his fingers jittering and his nerves jangling.

"Hugo?" a voice says near him, and he turns around to see John give him an encouraging smile. "We're going to be amazing, mate."

"What if she's not here?" Hugo replies, and John looks briefly thoughtful, before smiling even more broadly and clapping him on the shoulder, the guitar in his other hand shining in the dim backstage lighting.

"She'll be here. She's always here."

And then the screaming out front magnifies impossibly and all five of them are being shoved forward onto the stage, Sam running to the drum kit with a wave to the people shrieking with joy out in the front row, bouncers having to forcibly hold the railings upright to stop the overzealous crowd knocking them over.

Hugo takes the microphone as his bandmates sort themselves out around him, Mark getting himself ready behind the keyboard.

"Good evening London!" Hugo yells into the microphone, and as the furore reaches fever pitch he feels his nerves settling, his confidence returning. After all, out here, he's not _Hugo-son-of-Hermione-Granger-and-Ron-Weasley_. He's Hugo, lead singer of Catacomb, the band with a Grammy award and three number one albums under their belts at the tender ages of twenty three through twenty five.

As the spotlight swivels round onto him and they launch into their first song, Hugo scans the audience, because she just _has _to be here.

And she is.

To one side, in one of the seated sections, a smile on her face that widens when she meets his eyes.

Hugo breathes out, and sings.

* * *

Afterwards, still high on adrenaline and adoration, the band gathers backstage and merely sits for a while, to feel the moment. This has become a habit since their first sold-out gig, and it's almost superstition now.

"I'd say that went pretty well," John comments eventually, and the other four murmur in agreement.

"Apart from, you know, Hugo's lack of ability to keep his eyes off that one chick," Jimmy the bass guitarist replies. "It's bad for publicity, that. You've got to pretend to be in love with all of them."

"Shut up, Jim, I know that," Hugo retorts, tossing a handy cushion at him. "And I wasn't staring at her for the _whole _thing."

"Yeah you were," the other four chorus, and Hugo swears amiably at them before getting up and heading off to find her.

She's waiting in his dressing room, looking pleased with herself, and Hugo can't help but admire her audacity.

"How did you get in this time?" he inquires, unable to resist smiling. "I put wards on the room."

"It did make things tricky," she admits, throwing herself confidently into a chair and picking up a guitar pick to play with between her fingers. "I thought I'd challenge myself a bit tonight anyway, though. I used Confundus charms on your security guards and wiped anybody's memory who tried to stop me."

"I don't approve of you using magic willy-nilly on those who are just here to look out for me," he admonishes, not meaning a word of it, because she's nothing if not creative and that Gryffindor pluck certainly shines through. After all, how many girls would have the courage to apparate straight into the dressing room of one of the most popular musicians on Earth?

"But you're a little impressed," she replies, beaming. "Admit it, go on."

"Okay, Jen, I'm impressed," he replies, and her smile grows impossibly wider and her eyes are glittering in the lights and, you know what, he's still just as in love with her as ever.

"So I was thinking," she says slowly, pensively, her brow suddenly creasing, "I need to get James a present for his birthday."

"And you came to me because…?" Hugo replies, trying not to let the agony of being in love with his cousin's wife show through, gritting his teeth against the pain and filing it away for later reference when songwriting.

"Because you're my best guy friend after James," she informs him matter-of-factly, "and you're good with presents and stuff."

"Oh, cheers," Hugo says, and collapses down into the chair opposite her, regarding her from blueblue eyes as she fumbles around in a pocket for her wand, pulling it out and casting a picture up onto the wall.

"So I was thinking maybe I'd pay for us to go get photographs done together?" she says brightly, showing him a photography company's logo. "I figure you'd know the best ones – I want to get him Muggle ones 'cause I want them to be as much art as memories," she continues, flicking her wand to bring up some pictures of her family from when she was younger, looking professional in black and white. "Plus, weren't you just in a bunch of Muggle magazines?"

"We haven't done any interviews since Vanity Fair," Hugo replies truthfully. "I mean, one of us is always in things like _Hello _or _US Weekly_, but we try not to talk about that."

"Okay, so Vanity Fair," she says, and Hugo has to admire her determination. "Who was the photographer? I think I saw those, they were good. You looked pretty smokin'," she adds, putting on a poor American gangster accent. Hugo laughs and then sighs.

"It'll probably be a bit pricey, Jenny," he replies disconsolately. "I mean, I'm happy to help out, if –"

"For the last time, Hugo, I am _not _taking any money off you," she retorts firmly, scowling, and Hugo remembers that she has a wand in her hand and tapers his response accordingly.

"Okay then, no-go on the Vanity Fair photography front," he says, pondering, and then an idea strikes him. "Does it have to be photos?"

"Well, that's the only idea I've come up with so far," she answers, leaning back in her chair and waving her wand to vanish the picture, starting instead to draw little pictures in the air out of coloured lights. "If you've got any better ones, fire away."

"Well, it's not necessarily better," he replies uncertainly, and then continues in a rush, "But you could learn a song on the guitar and sing it to him. That would be romantic."

She looks intrigued, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her chin resting on her hands. "Explain further."

"Well, I can teach you a bit of simple guitar, and I can help you write a song for him. You could learn to play it on the guitar and sing at the same time. That would be really romantic."

She grins suddenly, so widely it's like her face will break in two, rocketing across the room to give him a huge hug. "Thanks Hugo! You're the _best _cousin-in-law _ever_, you know that?"

He wraps his arms around her in return and breathes in her soft scent and forces out a laugh.

"Yeah, you've only told me, like, five hundred times."

"Five hundred and one," she retorts with a grin, drawing back to ruffle his hair furiously. "Okay, first lesson, mine and James' place tomorrow at three-thirty. He's out at work until six so we can get some good practice in."

"I'll bring a guitar," he promises, and she's giving him a gentle kiss on the cheek and then blazing out of the room on a wave of laughter and excitement at this secret.

Mark, encountering her on his way in, watches her leave and then turns to Hugo with considerable interest.

"Isn't that the girl you –"

"She's married to my cousin," Hugo replies to pre-empt any unhelpful comments, and Mark enters the room and flops down into Jenny's recently-vacated seat with a despairing sigh.

"You poor fucker," he comments dolefully, throwing an empty beer can at Hugo. "How did she even get in here?"

"She's very sneaky," Hugo informs him truthfully, picking up his battered old guitar from where it's resting against his seat. "It's one of her many charms."

"You really are screwed, aren't you?" Mark says in semi-amazement, his fingers tapping out silent tunes on the arm of his chair like always. "She's hot, though, I can totally see why you like her."

"Thanks, man, this is doing great for helping me get over her."

"Well, you know," Mark replies, having the grace to look slightly bashful. "And there's no way she'll ever ditch your cousin in favour of you?"

"You don't know my family," Hugo says emotionlessly, staring at the door where she disappeared, his hand tapping blindly against the strings of the guitar.

"Well you never talk about them," Mark points out validly, his fingers moving faster. "So no, I don't know them. What are they, a bunch of axe-murderers?"

"Worse," Hugo replies, and okay so that might be a slight exaggeration but now he's got away from that never-ending pressure of living up to his parents' wizarding fame and his whole family's glorious brightness and made his own name in a totally different world – well, it's now that he's realised how deeply he was buried before his bandmates dug him out and into the sunshine.

"I want to meet them sometime," Mark decides, and then suddenly the rest of the band are crowding into the room with various hangers-on and threatening to decapitate Hugo if he doesn't come out with them tonight. Hugo gets up from his chair with barely a pause, because if there's one easy way to forget all his heartache it's to go out with his Muggle friends into Muggle clubs to pick up Muggle girls and get absolutely wasted on Muggle alcohol.

He thinks that Muggles always do things better, anyway.

* * *

He goes to her (_their_) apartment the next day for her first lesson, arriving in his new leather jacket (Dolce and Gabbana) with his new jeans (Levi's) and new t-shirt (Calvin Klein) and worn shoes and a battered old guitar case slung on his back.

He didn't bother apparating over, because he knows that one of the conditions of being sent enough new clothes for free to wear a different outfit every day of the year is that he makes sure to get photographed in them. In all honesty, he'd be happy with just the odd new shirt every now and again that he buys himself, but product endorsement gets money and money pays to put his niece and nephew through the best Muggle primary school in the country (although Rose is still under the impression the school is free, of course).

"Hey stranger," Jenny says when she opens the door, and Hugo smiles and accepts her hug, her long hair dead straight today and hanging in brown waves on either side of her face. "Long time, no see, huh?"

"Oh, yes, it's been _far _too long," Hugo teases, trying not to notice her long legs bare under her shorts and to focus on getting his guitar out of its case without making a fool of himself and zipping his finger in or something.

"Coffee?" she offers, heading into the kitchen, and he yells "black, no sugar" at her retreating back while he digs around in his pockets for the crumpled pieces of sheet music with various jotted annotations all over them, strumming a few chords out as he waits.

She returns with the coffee, and Hugo doesn't let her begin chatting because he knows that when she does that her laugh turns addictive and all he can focus on is teasing giggles out of her.

"So we'll learn a couple of basic chords today," he informs her, and she beams and moves to sit next to him on the sofa, taking a big gulp of her coffee and then setting down her mug to concentrate hard on what he's saying.

* * *

He spends hours with her, using the excuse of teaching her to close his hand over hers and curving his body around hers to check that she's doing the right thing and often just sitting and watching her, with her hair falling down around her face as she concentrates in that fierily fierce way only Gryffindors can.

"Same time tomorrow?" he asks as she shows him out, and she frowns slightly.

"Aren't you busy with your gigs and stuff?"

"Not all day," he replies, and she smiles and hugs him tightly again.

"You're the best, Hugo."

"Tell me that when you wow James," he says with a laugh, the bitterness well concealed. She chuckles and kisses his cheek before waving as he disappears off down the hallway.

* * *

For a month he steals two hours of her all to himself every day, teaching her the words to the song when she's got the guitar part off by heart, unable to help falling more in love with her with every pure, silvery note that drops from her lips.

Eventually, however, the big day arrives and he turns up at The Burrow for the first time in… well, too long.

He knocks slightly nervously on the door, the messily-wrapped present in his hands held so tightly it might be being slightly crushed, gulping as the door swings open and Lily comes into view.

"Hi," he says awkwardly, and he can't help staring because – well, why did nobody tell him she was pregnant?

"And where," she enunciates slowly, an expression on her face so murderous he actually takes a step backwards, "the _fuck _have you been for the last two years?"

"Well there was the tour, and then we had to go to promote in the States, and then –"

Her hand meets his face with a loud 'crack' noise, and Hugo is left to stand there in complete shock as she waddles off down the hallway, abandoning him at the front door, one hand held against his throbbing cheek.

"Holy crap, I'm sorry about her," Dominique exclaims, suddenly appearing and taking his sleeve to tug him inside. "It's the hormones, she's been in a foul mood all week. Thank God she's due soon."

Hugo allows himself to be led inside, thankful for Dominique's blunt manner, nursing his cheek. "How long 'til she… you know…?"

"Only two weeks," Dom replies, tipping a grin over her shoulder at him. "So you've only got another couple of weeks to suffer for. That is, if you're staying?"

"Yeah, I've got a month off now," he says, and she beams and then suddenly halts to shove him unceremoniously into the sitting room, already completely overcrowded.

"_Hugo_!" Roxanne shrieks in delight, and without warning he is assaulted on all sides by various family members, struggling to breathe in the crush until an imperious voice rings out.

"Um, excuse me, but it's _my _birthday and _I _would like to welcome our estranged cousin before you horrible lot asphyxiate him."

"Hey James," Hugo says in relief as his relatives reluctantly part, various small children still clinging to his legs, and James moves genteelly through the mass to regard Hugo carefully.

"Sure you can spare the time to be here?" he inquires, and Hugo makes an apologetic noise and hopefully holds out his gift.

"I brought you a present, if that changes anything?"

From somewhere in the background there is the sound of dark muttering and a hissed, "Shut _up_, Lily," from Dominique.

James gazes at him for a while longer, and then suddenly he's beaming and leaping forward to give Hugo a typically overzealous hug, tugging the gift off him and then waving royally to indicate that the family can go back to crushing him again.

* * *

By the time the party is well underway and everybody has gathered around to witness Jenny's gift to James, Hugo is ensconced on a sofa between – not by choice – a four-month pregnant Victoire and a rather unusually overenthusiastic Al.

"He just got engaged yesterday to Chloe," Victoire informs Hugo by means of a whisper in his ear, and Hugo suddenly understands and then ducks aside as none other than Chloe Nott herself appears, throwing herself at Al with the diamond on her ring finger glittering in the light and a massive smile adorning her cheeks.

"Hey Chloe," Hugo pipes up, and she pauses in snogging the living daylights out of Al to study Hugo carefully.

"Your song, Nights in London?" she says, and Hugo can tell that there is an end to this sentence.

"What about it?"

"It _sucked_," she informs him decisively, and then turns back to watch Jenny getting herself sorted with Hugo's well-worn guitar on her knees.

"Mark wrote it," Hugo defends himself instantly, but now the room is hushing and Jenny is smiling somewhat shyly as she tucks her hair (straight again) behind her ear and looks around at the room.

"I decided to not get James a material gift this year," she announces, switching her gaze to her husband, "But I hope he likes it anyway."

She blows a kiss to him and, without further ado, begins the first few chords of the song. As the tune that Hugo has heard so many times fills the air and then her pretty voice – _and oh, you were always going to be the one _– he clambers unobserved off the sofa and picks his way through the enraptured audience, disappearing out into the back garden of The Burrow, leaning against the wall and trying to hold back his tears.

He wipes his eyes in irritation and sighs angrily, shoving his hands into his pockets.

_Time to give up now_, he orders himself, and he so firmly believes himself that when Lily appears to command him back inside he doesn't even hesitate to follow her in, commenting in delight about the fact that she's appearing to forgive him.

She ignores him, but there's a hint of a smile on her lips and Hugo knows that maybe, just maybe, things will be alright.

* * *

**a/n**: if you liked it, I'm begging you not to favourite without reviewing!


	14. LilyScorpius

**a/n**: for Ninja Potter, because I still owe her a LilyScorpius for the _Write me a story_ thread over on the NextGen Fanatics forum from ages ago. I even made it a happy one, Ninja, just for you!

(I can't believe it either.)

**pairing**: LilyScorpius  
**words**: 1837

* * *

**painted in flames**  
all those pretty things  
god bless the pretty things  
_- Pretty Things, Take That_

_

* * *

_

He's definitely one of the prettiest boys she's ever seen (and oh, she's seen a few) and yeah, she's probably the prettiest girl in her year, so shouldn't that count for something?

* * *

So she doesn't have Dom's Veela-shine or Roxanne's stunning colouring with her dark skin and blueblue eyes – but she's got something else, something that's entirely _Lily_, with her radiance and her confidence and her way of _looking _that can bring a boy to his knees at thirty paces.

Any boy except Scorpius Malfoy, that is. She's known him since he started coming to stay with Al during the holidays when she was ten, and she slightly hates him because he knew her with pigtails and a smile that was only ever totally innocent.

"Potter Junior," he says with a smirk that is patently _Scorpius_, and she rolls her eyes and flops onto her back with a heavy sigh.

"Malfoy," she replies as he sinks back next to her, and the sun is golden over the field of thigh-high wild grasses as they lie in silence. With the grass so tall she can't even see him, and her breathing is oddly loud in the little cavern that she's created for herself.

"So, come here often?" he inquires eventually, and she decides that he's not going to bait her, not today, and she focuses instead on her breathing and the sweet scent of wildflowers and then feeling of the warm summer sun on her skin.

"Come on, Potter, it's no fun if you don't join in," he complains, and suddenly his hands are appearing and he's parting the grass that separates them so he can see her. "You're usually more interesting than this."

She glances sidelong at him, all dark red curls and long lashes, and then she sighs again and returns her green-eyed gaze to the gradually-darkening sky.

"I'm thinking," she informs him eventually, the words for once taking a while to process.

She comes out here for solitude, you see, and it's the one time when her brain slows down and her needle-sharp wit is blunted and all of her is peaceful and calm.

"Yes, I can see that," he replies, and she just smiles and turns her head, reaching out towards him. His eyes switch from her face to follow her fingers, and there's something she's not sure of settling onto his features.

But she's only reaching for a poppy growing so tall it is nearly brushing his chin. He keeps watching her though, his grey eyes trained on her hand as her fingers twist around the stem and tear the flower from the ground.

"Didn't have you down as a plant-killer, Potter," he says in slight surprise, and she smirks lazily (she learned from the master) and tucks the flower behind her ear where its petals caress her palepale skin delicately, like velvet.

"There's a lot you don't know about me, Malfoy," she retorts, turning her eyes back to the clouds, which are now touched with pink at the beginning of sunset.

"Clearly," he replies, and he's all wrong, too sharp and too harsh in the gentle softness of this dream-filled place.

"Shut up," she tells him softly, sitting up, her longlong curls trailing behind her as she straightens up to watch the day die, loose grass sticking to her white dress. She picks absently at the stalks as the sun sinks lower, the orange rays settling over her slim form.

Scorpius beside her finally falls silent, and she turns in surprise when all she can hear is birdsong and discovers him sitting next to her, leaning back on his hands as she is, his grey waistcoat and blue shirt as grassy as her hair and dress.

"You're looking positively middle-class," she informs him with a grin, and he turns his head to regard her, his eyes darkening as the light dims.

"You're looking like a gypsy," he replies, plucking a dandelion from the ground and blowing the white, fluffy seeds into her face. She coughs and wrinkles her nose, brushing them away from her nose and eyes and mouth, a stray few settling into her hair to rest there.

"It's terribly beautiful, isn't it?" she says, turning back to the colour-filled sky. "All golds and reds and pinks and blues."

"Very Gryffindor for such a Slytherin little girl," he retorts, but there's none of his usual venom. Instead he sounds almost… intrigued. Or something.

"I'm not little," she says, and she means it to be sharp but she can't make it so, not here. "I'm fifteen."

"Littler than me," he points out, and she thinks about that and then shrugs delicately to concede.

"Yes, I suppose so. I can still take you, though."

"Yeah?" he demands, just as the sun disappears and the night suddenly reigns, still and hot and heavy. "You think you're so tough, Potter."

"I _am _tough, Malfoy," she retorts, and now that the sun has gone the air is suddenly charged, no longer languorous and gentle. It's thick and almost oppressing, the hot days of summer at their zenith, and Lily can feel some strange electricity rolling through her like fire.

"Okay, Potter Junior, whatever you say," he replies, turning away, still leaning casually on his hands. His nonchalance is infuriating, she decides, tugging the fallen strap of her dress back up over her slim shoulder and shifting slightly in place.

"I'll prove it," she announces, and he's in the middle of forming the word "no" when suddenly she's leaping at him, bowling him over and landing heavily on top of him, wriggling to get him pinned down.

"We're a little old for this, aren't we?" he inquires as he holds her wrists away from his face, trying to hide his grin as she twists furiously to get him under her grasp.

"You just said I was little!" she protests, and he looks up at her with her hair shifting around her face and the moonlight lighting her from behind with her eyes awash with stars.

"I've changed my mind," he announces, suddenly very conscious of her warm weight on his abdomen and her longlong bare legs against his thighs. "I don't think you're little any more."

"That's because I'm _winning_," she informs him with a beam, making a renewed effort and laughing as he struggles against her.

She's strong, he'll give her that, all wiry muscles and furious determination and muttered swearwords. But he's fought her before and okay, it's never been quite like this, but he knows her weaknesses and it is but the work of a second to hook one arm around her waist and his left leg around her right and to flip them effortlessly until she is stuck under him, wriggling ferociously and glaring up at him with all the wildness of a caged tiger, prowling backwards and forwards behind the bars.

With an almighty heave, she regains dominance, hurrying to get his arms pinned with her knees, but he manages to get himself on top again, laughing as she flops backwards and goes limp, panting, his full weight holding her down.

"It's only because you're fat," she says eventually, and he focuses on this and the need for his usual quick wit rather than the way her chest is heaving against his and the feel of her body so young and supple beneath his.

"I am _not _fat," he says sharply, the usual surety belied by the hint of a catch in his voice, because from this angle their mouths are a bare inch apart and her eyes are very dark with him blocking the moonlight from them.

"Yeah you are," she argues, giving one final wiggle before surrendering and relaxing against the carpet of thick grass. "Otherwise I'd have won."

"I'll take my shirt off, if you like, to prove I'm not," he says, and she chuckles and suddenly one of her fingers is running down the side of his face, her expression pensive as she watches the trail her fingertip makes down his cheek with something akin to fascination.

"I'm good, thanks," she replies, her eyes finally darting up to meet his gaze. "I don't want to be scarred for life."

"Admit you want me to take my shirt off, Potter, go on," he presses, his tone gently teasing, and he realises he's made a mistake when she abruptly removes her fingertip and positively _beams _up at him.

"Only if you admit you want me to take mine off," she retorts, and he doesn't really know what to say as she throws her head back and her laugh echoes out into the darkness, her curls a heavy red carpet around them both. "You know you do, Scorpius. You know you want me to take my shirt off and let you _stare _because you've fancied me since I wore that dress in fourth year and you were with that Katherine girl and you've _dreamed _of me with no shirt on, _looking _at you, and –"

He cuts her off with a kiss, then, and yes it's letting her win and it's probably exactly what she's wanted all along, but _God _she's _right_ and it's sinful because she's _young _(but not innocent) and her father won't be happy because Scorpius is too old for her (two years is a lifetime at this age) but, Merlin, that's the first time she's said his name, his real _first name_, and 'Scorpius' turns from something slightly ugly and pompous and unwieldy to a prayer on her sharp tongue.

When they break apart, she's no longer the only one breathing heavily, and his eyes flash open to meet hers, grey into green, and she's smiling slowly, languorously, her face full of stars.

"Knew it," she says, and then she's wrenching her arms free of his hold and using her hands around the back of his neck to drag him down hungrily into another kiss, the night cloaking them as he rolls them so she's on top of him, her weight comforting and exciting as she presses down into him, her lips very soft but very fierce against his.

His hands are in her hair, on her back, gliding down but never quite daring to touch her legs, her dress almost hiked up around her waist, their bodies touching at every point and all their nerves ends in an explosion of sensation.

"Don't pretend you haven't wanted this from the start," she murmurs against his mouth, her breath coming in short gasps. "You can try to hide it all you want, but I know the _truth_."

"Oh, shut up, Potter," he replies with a grin, his hands sliding up to frame her face, holding her head gently but firmly as he gazes into her eyes, her lips bruised and swollen with kisses, her hair messy and full of grass and her eyes _blazing_.

"Whatever, Malfoy," she retorts, and then she's beaming and kissing him again, her touch sure and radiant and burning him wherever she touches.

* * *

**a/n**: still, if you liked it enough to favourite, please don't do so without reviewing!


	15. TeddyRose

**a/n**: for Aiiimy, because she loves Snow Patrol as much as I do.

**pairing**: TeddyRose  
**words**: 1771

* * *

**the sea between us**  
i break, you don't  
i was always set to self-destruct, though  
_- If There's A Rocket Tie Me To It_, _Snow Patrol_

_

* * *

_

She's a darling little hurricane of second-guessing and trying too hard to live up to expectations. She's the brains of the Weasley conglomerate, the girl with the grades and the dedication and the _smile_.

Her smiles are ready and easy and, yeah, he's heard rumours of how short her temper is but mostly she's full of happiness when he sees her. He doesn't see her around Scorpius Malfoy, of course, and apparently people honestly fear for their lives when those two are around each other for too long.

But she's all about the problem-solving, is Rose, and because he's usually one of the components of a problem he doesn't really understand how she can be so good at taking a situation, twisting a few things and yanking a few levers, and fixing it. Just like that.

There's an issue with that, though, because yeah she's brilliant at solving problems, but she's Rose and she's always trying to solve _people _and if there's one thing he's learned in his twenty-nine years of cocking things up it's that people can't be solved.

* * *

"I just don't _understand_," she's complaining to Lily when he comes into the kitchen, loosening his tie and heading straight to the fridge.

"What's bugging you today, Rosie?" he inquires with a grin, taking a carton of orange juice out and – ignoring Lily's protests – chugging it straight down without bothering with a cup.

"That is _so _unhygienic," Lily informs him reproachfully, and she's glaring at him with those big green eyes so he just sticks his tongue out at her and replaces the juice, moving to take a seat at the table with the two girls.

"So what's the matter?" he presses, turning to Rose, pulling his tie off completely now and undoing the top buttons of his shirt with a sigh of relief.

"It's Albus and Chloe," Rose informs him, her eyes lingering on the exposed, tanned skin at the base of his neck. "I don't see why they can't just get _over _themselves and admit that they like each other."

"What have I told you about leaving people to figure things about by themselves, Rose?" he inquires, grinning, using his tie to whip the back of Lily's hand as she tries to sneak a few galleons out of his pocket without him noticing.

"I know, I know," Rose replies impatiently, waving her hand in the air as if to brush his comment away, the freckles on her nose wrinkled as she thinks. "But there's got to be a way to show them, doesn't there?"

"Seriously, Rose," Teddy and Lily say at the same time, "Leave them."

"They're smart enough to sort themselves out, I promise," Lily adds, throwing a Satsuma at her cousin. "C'mon, trust me – it's my brother and my best friend, for Salazar's sake! I think I'd know."

"She's right," Teddy concurs, ducking the Satsuma as it comes sailing back from Rose's direction. "I know you're smart, Rosie, but I must have told you a thousand times not to bother trying to fix people that don't want to be fixed. You're not a miracle worker."

"Stop acting like you're the next bloody Mohammed," Rose complains fiercely, pushing her hair irritably back behind her ear. "You think you're so _wise _just 'cause you're the oldest."

"But I _am _wise," he responds with a big grin, and she huffs and stands up, storming out of the kitchen before he or Lily can stop her.

"Malfoy's been winding her up today," Lily informs him with a wink, also getting up. "It's not your fault she's being so scratchy."

"Mm," Teddy replies vaguely, watching the spot where she disappeared and trying not to remember how pretty she looks all flushed with anger.

* * *

"Hey, Rose," he says when he next sees her a few days later. She's home alone, her flat messy and crowded even without the presence of her roommate. "Forgiven me for the other night yet?"

"Only if you've brought me cake," her voice calls from the kitchen, and he laughs and picks his way through the debris to find her.

"I did," he replies, presenting her with a white box when she turns, and he tries not to be too happy about coaxing a grin from her as she accepts it and discovers a cheesecake slice sitting in it.

"You, Teddy Lupin, are my new favourite person in the whole world," she informs him, beaming, reaching up to give him a one-armed hug. He returns the hug and tries to focus on her voice rather than her long bare legs under shorts or the strip of pale midriff that appears below her short top when she reaches up.

"Love you too," he responds with an easy smile, grinning as she detaches herself and goes over to the table, plonking the cake down with little finesse and grabbing a fork out of her dishwasher and sitting down heavily in a chair.

"Grab a seat, Lupin," she commands, waving her fork imperiously. He does so, and they sit and watch each other for a while as she eats the cheesecake. He finds himself fascinated by this one perfect red curl hanging by her right ear, winding downwards and glinting with threads of copper as her hair swings, catching the light.

"So I'm taking it the cake's good?" he inquires eventually, dragging his eyes back to hers. She grins, her eyes creasing up with laugh-lines, and generously holds out the loaded fork to him.

"See for yourself."

He thinks that maybe he's supposed to hold the fork himself to eat the cake, but when he reaches up she holds on and his hand is wrapped around hers. Her gaze doesn't leave his as he neatly takes the cake from the fork, the tips of her fingers dangerously close to his mouth as he chews carefully.

"Pretty good," he says, and his voice has dropped a few tones without his permission, and his hand is still around hers except now she's flushing and she looks terribly beautiful with her cheeks stained pink and her chest heaving slightly under that sky-blue vest.

He isn't entirely sure how it happens, but suddenly they're leaning across the table towards each other and as they meet in the middle, mouths gasping and hungry and hands at each other's clothes, he thinks about need and desperation and living for the moment because the future is horribly full of consequences.

Somehow they end up in her bedroom, he wearing boxers and she nothing at all, and he knows that in the morning he'll regret this, because this is _Rose _and she's _Rose_ and this is the first time she'll ever be part of a problem rather than the one fixing it.

But Teddy's always been a problem-creator, and he supposes that it was inevitable that one of them would corrupt the other in the end. He succumbs to the feeling of her lips and her skin and her hair, and decides that this is probably the best mistake he's ever made.

* * *

He's right, because in the morning when he wakes up the bed next to him is cold and she's sitting on the window sill, dangerously close to falling out, the cigarette in her hands curling dirty smoke up into the morning sky.

"Those are bad for you," he says reproachfully, and she turns and her gaze is worryingly calm as she regards him thoughtfully.

"Sometimes we need to do things that are bad for us," she replies, and as he gets up to start dressing he wonders when she turned from the girl he knew into this young woman with her eyes full of regrets and her heart full of stars.

"I'm sorry about last night," he says once he's found his boxers and jeans and t-shirt, rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck. "I shouldn't have taken advantage of you."

"I think it was more the other way round," she counters, but then there's the hint of a smile tugging at her lips and she flicks the still-burning cigarette neatly out of the window. "But, okay, let's go with your decision."

"It was wrong of me, Rose, I'm so sorry," he says, not daring to take a step closer to her because she looks dreadfully vulnerable with her hair all a mess and dressed in that too-large t-shirt. "I should never have done it."

She doesn't move towards him either, and the stretch of carpet between them might as well be an entire ocean.

"I know, Teddy," she replies tiredly, and suddenly he's noticing the bags under her eyes. "But don't blame yourself, okay? I needed that last night. It's been a mess with Jack and Scorpius and Ed and I just needed… I don't know. You. Relief. Distraction."

He doesn't know whether to be relieved or cry – because she's Rose and she's not supposed to be just using him. She's supposed to regret it and try to fix it and pretend nothing ever happened.

"Don't be mad at me, Teddy," she demands suddenly, folding her arms and narrowing her eyes in that way of hers. "I thought you knew. There's never been anything between us – don't try to turn this into something it's not."

"I know," he says, and he's only pleased because his voice didn't break on those two words. "In that case… I'm glad I could help you."

With that he turns and storms out of the room, disapparating back to his own flat before she has a chance to say something further to hurt him. She doesn't mean it, he knows, and he doesn't know why this is turning into something so big for him, but he's always been a sucker for self-destruction and he collapses onto his old sofa and turns the television on and avoids the family for days.

He guesses that it's because Rose has always lived up to expectations – she's one of _those _girls – and he had expected her to be at least slightly interested in him as _him_. And yet she wasn't, she just wanted him because he was there and he was willing and, yeah, probably because he brought cake. But this is an anomaly, her not living up to expectations, and he wonders if there's other ways that she's choosing to disappoint people, slowly and subtly and gently so that the pressure shifts off her, just slightly.

He doesn't blame her, not really, because she's right – he's making this into something it's not, and the fault is his alone. She's living up to her own expectations, and he cannot begrudge her that.

* * *

**a/n**: yeah, so, I hate this one. But I wanted to use the lyrics, and this is what came to mind, so… I hope you enjoyed it?

If you liked it enough to favourite, please don't do so without reviewing!


	16. LorcanDominique

**a/n**: not overly fond of this one, but I felt like doing something with pure description, and this probably suffered in a couple of places for it. My apologies.

For my Twin, Sky-Azure Raindrops, because she is the perfect Sebastian to my Chloe.

**pairing**: DominiqueLorcan  
**words**: 766

* * *

**Velocity Girl**  
oh velocity girl,  
i can't keep up with you_  
- Velocity Girl, Snow Patrol_

_

* * *

_

She's a whirling dervish. She's all brightbright eyes and knowing smiles and innocent laughter and long red curls and she's a masterpiece of living, brimming over with alive-ness and colours and that special little part of her that glows brighter than the stars.

He's always loved her, he thinks. Since before he can remember, when they were young and she and he and Lily and Lysander and Roxanne and Hugo and Fred used to run around the big garden at The Burrow, screaming with joy and amusement and being pains in everyone's necks.

And now they're all seventeen and she blazes while he sticks around in the background, trying to work out where he figures in the world of this girl who believes in fairytales and the absolution of gravity and lives at three hundred miles an hour.

She breaks down occasionally, like an angel running on petroleum, and it takes her a couple of days to refuel and pick herself back up, and he's always the one that's there to help her and he revels in being the one who she runs to and falls asleep next to and contemplates thoughtfully through those grey eyes, so starkly beautiful with their framing of thick red lashes.

But when she's fixed and back to hurdling headlong at life again he fades away and she lives too _fast _for him. He is forced to trail behind as she sows beautiful destruction, toying with boys with that Veela-glow of hers and discarding them like used towels, reaping hearts like a succubus and laughing with Lily all the while, oblivious to broken-hearted boys and their damaged self-esteem.

He thinks those two girls are the problem, really, because they egg each other on and maybe if you took one away the other would slow down, just a little, but heck they're made for each other and okay they're cousins rather than sisters, but they couldn't be closer if they tried.

He tries to slow her down and patch her up around the edges, because she's falling apart at the seams and she's _blind _to this, but he's not and it breaks his heart. It's kind of ironic, really, because he's the one wearing glasses and she's the one with twenty-twenty vision, but you know what they say about hindsight.

(It's twenty-twenty, remember?)

She breaks down during Herbology one day, and he knew it was going to happen because she's overdue and she's tired with those deepdeep purple bags under her eyes and her paler-than-usual skin. But she's part-Veela, so even this cannot make her less beautiful.

One minute she's howling with laughter at something that Fred has said, and the next she's as silent as a church, brows drawn over swirling grey eyes, her small hands twisting in her lap, that radiance that usually burns in her gone out like a blown lightbulb.

He's at her side in mere moments, and he stays there for the rest of the day, eventually accompanying her to _their _place, a secret hidden room somewhere in the vicinity of the Astronomy Tower, a small room between floors with windows to let the evening sun stream in.

She doesn't say a word, just goes over to the window and stands with her forehead leaning against it, gazing out at the panoramic view of the countryside.

He goes to stand behind her, his weight against her in a way that he knows reassures her, his face pressed into her slim shoulder as she sighs mightily and lets her head lolls sideways, resting on his, as her hair streams down loosely around them both.

They stay like this until the sky darkens and turns the world into a spinning mess of darkness and sparkling lights in windows where candles have been lit.

Lorcan stays with her and says nothing, digging a sandwich out of his bag and forcing it on her – she's thin enough already without skipping meals, and it doesn't take long before she's asleep, her body curled up against his and her breathing even and rhythmical.

He doesn't know what it is with her, these little episodes of silence. It's like a stop at a petrol-station, he supposes, where she won't talk and forgets to eat, needing the silence to help refuel so she can survive when she's alive properly again, back to crashing through life with all the finesse of a(n adorable) bulldozer.

He falls asleep next to her, lulled by the sound of her breathing and the warm weight of her against him, his lips in her hair and his heart in her keeping.

* * *

**a/n**: if you liked it enough to favourite, please don't do so without reviewing!


	17. TeddyJenny

**a/n**: in my defence, I did warn Aiiimy that I was going to find it particularly hard to write TeddyOC. Especially when starting at one o' clock in the morning seemed like such a good idea.

**pairing**: TeddyJenny  
**words**: 844

* * *

**Tell Me Are You Alive?  
**wouldn't it be nice to say hello to a stranger,  
not to worry about her thoughts.  
_- Stranger, Thriving Ivory_

_

* * *

_

Sometimes all he needs is a pretty stranger with eyes made of stars and thoughts behind those eyes that he doesn't have to worry about. Because this, all of this, with these teenage girls that fall over themselves to impress him is exhausting when all he wants, from time-to-time, is a little solitude.

He discovers solitude in a Muggle bar, drowning his sorrows in something not as strong as firewhiskey but close enough. He sits hunched over, ignoring the rest of the population of the pub – that is, until he swings around to head for the loos and catches sight of her.

She's in a corner, sitting with a group of men that he's sure should seem familiar, and she's swaying slightly to the music and there's a beer bottle in her hand, clutched tightly between long fingers.

She catches his eye as he sits and stares – _stares_, there's no other word for it – and then suddenly she's crossing the room and he's trying to work out why because there's nobody else sitting near him that she might want to talk to, and she's coming closer, and –

"Hello," she says pleasantly, and Teddy is forced to come to the very real conclusion that she intends to talk to him. "I'm Jenny."

"Teddy," he replies, unable to do anything but watch as she hops up onto the barstool next to him. "Teddy Lupin."

She says nothing in response to this, but her eyes widen slightly and she takes a hasty swig of her beer.

"I always heard you had brown hair," she comments with evident surprise, and Teddy takes a second look at her, from her long, straight brown hair to her pretty brown eyes and four-mile-long legs.

"You've heard of me?"

"Oh, you're practically a household name," she replies, laughing, and then leans forwards and puts him out of his misery. "I'm magic too. A friend of mine works in the Auror office."

"Oh, I see," Teddy responds slightly stupidly, and she's smiling at him and so he does the best thing he can think of and swings around to face the bar again. "Can I buy you a drink?"

* * *

It goes as it was always going to from the minute she walked over, and as Teddy tumbles her back onto his bed in his book-filled little apartment around one in the morning, he revels in being able to slip this easily into a world that consists solely of this beautiful stranger with the shiny hair and starry eyes.

He's probably running from something (some_one_) because this stranger in his bed is just a distraction from the problem of the girl who refuses to admit to love and hides instead behind a façade of bravado and drives him to distraction.

"Your hair is pink," the girl – Jenny – comments in surprise, and as she says this Teddy pauses and glances up to check the mirror on his chest of drawers, hardly surprised to find his hair a shocking shade of fuchsia.

"Yeah, it does that," he informs her with a grin, and then he bends to kiss her, slowly and languorously, and she arches up into him as he smiles against her mouth.

He's going to regret this tomorrow, he's sure, because there's something familiar tugging at the back of mind about her name (-doesn't James have a best friend named Jenny?-) and he'll be hungover and slightly ashamed to have been so transparent in his attempts to forget everything, just for one night.

"Don't worry about it," she says suddenly from underneath him, and he glances at her in surprise.

"Worry about what?"

"Consequences," she replies, twisting her fingers in a lock of his now-navy hair. "I need this too. Just one night to forget everything else."

He meets her eyes, suddenly, slightly thrown by the clarity in her gaze, but then she's tugging him sharply down for another kiss and her groan is tumbling onto his tongue, her hands fisting in his hair, and he is instantly distracted from her troubles.

* * *

As he expected, the next morning he awakes to a throbbing headache, the feeling that some small rodent has crawled into his mouth and died, and an empty bed.

There is a fresh cup of coffee on his bedside table, along with a small vial of hangover potion, and his doubt about that dark-eyed stranger hardens into certainty as he recognises the messy handwriting that has scrawled "hangover cure" on the label of the bottle.

That is a label he has seen a thousand times before, on bottles James has leant him after particularly hard-drinking nights out, which contained hangover cures made by James' best friend, a Muggleborn witch with a curious talent for Potions called Jenny.

"James is going to kill me," Teddy announces to his empty apartment, feeling better to know that he can bear the sound of his own voice without passing out, and then stumbles into the bathroom to make himself presentable for the day ahead.

No consequences, she promised.

He'll hold her to that.

* * *

**a/n**: if you liked it enough to favourite, please don't do so without reviewing!


	18. MollyLorcan

**a/n**: am considering tackling Albus in the next chapter. It's just occurred to me that he is curiously absent so far.

**pairing**: LorcanMolly  
**words**: 2206

* * *

**sunny days in store  
**so pour me out like water  
and soak me up like rain  
_- Runaway, Thriving Ivory_

_

* * *

_

He's pressed the restart button, and it's all because you're beautiful (_beautiful_).

* * *

As a child, you were just too cute. You had this little urchin smile and those ruffled red curls and those wide, innocent blue eyes that just sucked everyone in, guilelessly and easily and adorably.

And now you're seventeen and your curls are longer and sleeker and they've got a lot less to do with tousled. Your eyes are still working like Charybdis, pulling poor unfortunate hearts in and never letting them go – except now there's nothing innocent about you. Those blue eyes drag people in, sinfully and calculatedly and magnetically.

And maybe that makes you a bitch but it's okay because you're _you_, the only girl who even aims for perfection in your whole massive family, and that sort of gives you the liberty to be as horrific as you like, yeah? Just to prove that daughter-of-Percy stereotype correct because if there's one thing you're good at it's living up to expectations.

You turned to perfect aged thirteen, like everyone thought you would.

You derailed at sixteen, like everyone _knew_ you would.

You've lived your whole life in this never-ending bubble of expectations and the idea of living free of it is so foreign to you it's like it's presented in Japanese. You don't really bother with perfection any more because it's so tiresome. Instead you stroll around the halls of Hogwarts like you own them, that blueblue tattoo burning truth into the skin of your shoulder and your hips swinging just the right way.

You used to try for everything so _hard_, because it had to be perfect or else you felt worthless, or something. And now you barely try at all and somehow it's all working out _better_. So you wear your hair long and loose and raggedly curly, and no it's not as sleek as it was straight but this way those deep-buried strands of shimmering copper catch the torchlight and the angles of your face are softer, rounded by the contrast of your curls, and boys fall over themselves for you and you feel so _powerful_.

You turn seventeen and then you move up into Seventh Year and you turn eighteen and you condescend to study for your exams because, deep down, you've always hated disappointing your father and besides Lucy got the Head Girl badge so why should she get the best grades too?

You're still drawing boys in and using them for the brief respite from pressure that they provide, the skilled ones setting your body alight and the slow ones just letting themselves be drawn deeper and deeper.

You feel kind of horrible about it all, sometimes. But not horrible enough to stop.

You come back after Christmas and sneakily add the young and incredibly handsome Charms teacher to the notches in your bedpost, keeping this one quiet from everyone but Lily, who has somehow become your… _friend_, despite the fact that she's a year younger than you and Slytherin and perfect without even having to try.

You expect her to laugh and give you a high-five, but instead she turns infuriatingly mature and says that she wouldn't have helped you get that tattoo if she'd known it was going to turn you into this.

"Turn me into _what_?" you reply, hating how she's sitting their with her pretty green eyes so judgemental and her arms folded and her whole body just screeching outraged morality at you, which is rich when she's in love with her cousin's boyfriend.

"This," she retorts, gesturing at you. "I mean, I love you, Molls, don't get me wrong, and I sure as heck admire you because Chloe's been trying to lure Professor Layton into her bed for a year already, and you've done it with barely even an effort. But," and here she frowns, "This isn't _you_, Molly. You're better than this."

"And how would you know that?" you inquire, and you mean it to sound spiteful and rude but instead it just sounds kind of desperate.

In reply, she turns you around to face the mirror and you stare at yourself and her and she hugs you tightly around the shoulders, burying her face in your hair.

"Because you're like me, Molls," she says quietly. "Second-hand name, second-hand attention – anything we do, our namesakes have probably done it already. I know you. You're _kind _and you're _brave_ but there's no point you being that, right? Because Grandma Weasley has been it already. And I'm smart and stubborn like my grandmother, but there's no point me being it because I don't do it nearly as well as her."

"But you've got so much more," you protest, clutching her thin pale arms in an attempt to reassure her, because you've never seen Lily quite like this. She's always been so bold and confident and colourful, always cheerful and chattering. "You're Slytherin, and she was Gryffindor, and you're so quick-witted it's almost unbelievable, and you can make friends with _anyone _and you can talk for England and you play the sort of pranks she was always getting so angry at your grandfather about."

You feel her smile against the skin of your neck at that, and she lifts her head and meets your gaze in the mirror steadily.

"And you've got more too," she tells you firmly, and you get the feeling this is where the conversation was going all along. "Because you're clever and ambitious and you don't give up on anything, and you don't place your whole emphasis on family, and you're popular and you're sexy and you're not afraid to hold unpopular opinions on things."

Somehow, somewhere along the line, you've started grinning like a fool and she's grinning too.

"Take my advice," she says, spinning you around to look you properly in the eye. "Go to John's party. Get wasted and have a good time. You need it."

You laugh and hug her fiercely, murmuring a thank you into her fiery hair and then you get up and head out of her dormitory, sneaking across the Slytherin common room unnoticed and heading up to Gryffindor Tower.

* * *

You go to the party and Lily's right, it is fun, and the next morning you wake up with a throbbing headache but thankfully no naked guy in bed with you, and you can't work out why this is such a relief.

It seems to have drilled a lesson of some sort in you, because you start to turn it around, vowing no more boys until you leave school and focusing on your grades, and Merlin it's sickening at first but eventually you fall into the rhythm of it, feeling true pride in _yourself _when you get Os in your homework rather than just thinking how pleased your father will be when he hears.

Lucy is thriving and blazing this year, and you would hate her for it but you find, suddenly, that you just don't have the time or the energy for that. Instead you decide to get along with her, and she seems surprised at first but then accepts it, seeming delighted that you're finally stepping off your high horse.

You get Os in all but one of your NEWTs, and you graduate from Hogwarts feeling like you can conquer the world. Your father sets up all sorts of job interviews for you, and your aunts and uncles are offering you positions in pretty much every profession, but you turn them all down and decide to spend a year working in a bookshop.

It's certainly not appropriate for someone who got the top NEWT grades in the school, but in all honesty you just need some time away from the hustle and bustle of your usual life.

You work every day and the shop is generally quiet, so you practice your writing and daydream about being a journalist like you really want, wondering about the best way to admit to Aunt Ginny that you really _do _want that interview she offered you.

You are in the middle of scribbling something about unicorns in Nova Scotia when the bell above the door tinkles and a tired-looking young man comes in the door, a battered guitar slung on his back and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of his nose.

"Lorcan," you say in surprise, sitting up straight in your chair. "What are you doing here?"

"Book shopping," he replies with a grin, as though this should be obvious, crossing the shop to the non-Fiction section at the back of the shop. "It is a bookshop, after all. C'mon, Molly, I thought you were supposed to be smart?"

"Yeah, well," you reply lamely as he disappears behind a shelf of books, a faint twanging sound accompanied by a muttered expletive reaching your ears as he evidently knocks his guitar against something.

You stifle a laugh and try to get back to your writing, but the unicorns want nothing to do with you so you sigh and scrunch up the piece of paper and toss it towards the bin, getting it in first try (you've had a lot of practice).

"So you're still going with this music thing," you say loudly, and it's more of a statement than a question but whatever. His voice floats over the shelves towards you, sounding amused.

"So it would seem. And you're actually serious about this bookshop thing?"

"How d'you mean?" you inquire, a little confused, and his curly-haired head pokes around a stack of books and grins at you.

"Most of us thought you were joking when you said you were going to run a bookshop when you left Hogwarts. We assumed it was a euphemism for becoming Minister for Magic or something."

"I'm impressed you even know what euphemism means," you reply snarkily, and he laughs and vanishes from sight again. "And yes, I'm actually serious about this bookshop thing. Evidently."

This time he reappears from the bookshelves to her left, and you jump in surprise.

"Merlin, Lorcan, don't _do _that!" you exclaim, hand on heart, and he grins and crosses the room to hop up and sit on the desk next to you.

"Do I make your pulse race, Mweasley?"

"Fuck off," you mutter in a most unladylike fashion, trying to shove him off the counter and failing miserably. He laughs and twists to fight you off, clamping two big hands around your upper arms and holding you away from him effortlessly.

"C'mon, Molly, you were never a fighter," he teases, and you take a wasted swing at his shoulder that he dodges easily, and then suddenly he's swinging his legs over the counter and landing next to you, beside your workchair and desk. "I say, I like the view from in here."

"Get out!" you command instantly, using the opportunity to wriggle away from him. "No customers behind the counter!"

"Oh, I'm downgraded to customer now, am I?" he inquires, and you sigh wearily and roll your eyes, sinking into your chair.

"I give up. Stay. Burn the place down. I just don't have the energy any more."

He stares down at you for a moment consideringly, and then grins and leaps effortlessly back over the counter, much to your envy – you've never been able to do that.

"C'mon, Mweasley," he commands, opening the door of the counter for you, gesturing grandly towards the entrance. "I'm taking you to get coffee."

"I don't like coffee," you reply instantly, quite surprised to find yourself actually wanting to go. "So thanks, but no thanks. And, seriously – why do you call me Mweasley? I've been wondering since Fifth Year."

"Tea, then," he coaxes, smiling winningly at you, his eyes blue and warm under his unruly fringe. "And I'm not telling. I wouldn't back in Fifth Year and I won't now."

"If I come for tea," you bargain, folding your arms and raising an eyebrow, "Will you tell me?"

He pauses and looks pensive, and then suddenly beams at you. "Lunch, and I'll tell you."

You waver, but he's terribly handsome with the faded sunlight streaming in through the dusty windows and that rapscallion grin gracing his features, so you sigh and roll your eyes.

"Only so you'll tell me," you clarify as you snatch up your coat, and he chuckles as he holds the door open for you.

"Of course," he replies, and you hide your grin behind your hair as the two of you exit the store, the sign flipping to 'Closed' behind you.

* * *

And it's only lunch, but there's something about the way he smiles at you (and the fact that he persuades you to try something called _calamari_, despite the fact that you vowed to never eat seafood) that sets you wondering about possibility and your heartrate and his easy good-looks.

He doesn't tell you why he calls you 'Mweasley', so you make the logical assumption that it's from all those homeworks at school, where you printed 'M. Weasley' on the top so neatly and dedicatedly.

One year later exactly, he dedicates an album to "My Weasley, in honour of a year of having your love in return", and you suddenly have a memory of all those years at school with your eyes catching his accidentally, assuming he was merely disappointed with your attitude.

When he asks you to marry him, you say yes without a second thought.

* * *

**a/n**: I kind of... like this one. I don't know why. This pairing just appeals to me, which is most odd. I thought I'd have hated it.

If you liked this, please don't favourite without reviewing!


	19. AlbusKatherine

**a/n**: I love Albus. I really really do. I _love_ him. And I love him best with Chloe – but I'm saving them 'til the end. I hope you like this even though it's not Chloe. I like Katherine least of my OCs because I haven't developed her yet. But I think she's growing on me.

Also, I suck at writing Hufflepuffs.

**pairing**: AlbusKatherine  
**words**: 1981

* * *

**Prologue  
**what you gonna do, Katie?  
you're a sweet sweet girl, but it's a cruel cruel world.  
_- What Katie Did, The Libertines_

_

* * *

_

_first and second year_

She walks up to the stool with a numb sort of terror, dreading the moment when that hat touches her head – because, oh, with two Gryffindor parents the pressure is unbelievable and she doesn't _want _it. She just wants to be Katie, and to be her own person.

When the Hat roars out "HUFFLEPUFF!" she has never been quite so relieved to hear any one word in her whole life. She beams broadly as the yellow-and-black table explodes into cheering, and the girl that Katie had been talking to on the train gives her a thumbs-up from her place at the end of the line, still waiting to be Sorted.

Katie heads down off the platform, and she catches the eye of a green-eyed boy with black hair who is sitting at the Gryffindor table and clapping idly, more concerned with keeping the blonde boy on his left from throwing a spoon at the girl on the opposite side of the table, who is glaring at the blonde boy from under a bushy red fringe with extreme dislike.

The green-eyed boy rolls his eyes and, in doing so, meets Katherine's. She breaks the contact instantly, heading to slide into place at the Hufflepuff table.

She fancies him from that moment onwards.

_switch_

Albus is far more interested in stopping Scorpius from baiting Rose any more than necessary – they are friends, after all, and it's about time they acted like it in public – than in the Sorting.

He watches girls after boy get placed in a house, roaring for the Gryffindor ones and clapping politely for the rest. A small, blonde-haired girl gets Sorted into Hufflepuff and Albus is diverted from applauding when he notices that Scorpius is now holding a spoon and aiming it at Rose.

He gives his friend a punch in the arm, and then rolls his eyes and turns back to see what's happening now.

He meets a pair of pale green eyes from across the hall, and recognises the newly-Sorted Hufflepuff girl as her eyes dive aside and colour floods her cheeks, the heavy tangle of blonde hair obscuring her expression as she slips onto the Hufflepuff bench.

Albus smiles slightly, remembering his nerves at his own Sorting (and, oh, the _pride _of being in Gryffindor), and returns his attention to the rest of the students, nervous for Lucy and Molly and Louis at the other end of the line.

He doesn't remember the girl's name.

_second and third year_

She sees him around school, usually interceding in fights between members of his family, or his two best friends who claim to get along but seem to be bickering every other second.

She carries on with lessons, commiserating with her best friend Lucy when Lucy's twin beats her in lessons, and listening with none-too-slight awe as Lucy chatters away with their Mandarin-speaking dormmate, Lauren (who has a "real" name that Katherine can't pronounce).

Lucy attempts to teach her friend French, but Katherine's never had any pretence to being good at languages, so she settles for using Lucy as a multi-purpose translator and in return, she bakes her cakes that Lucy declares are "sent from heaven".

And all the while she's noticing Albus and what he's wearing and wishing that, just for two seconds, he'd notice her.

_switch_

Albus checks in with his younger cousins every now and again, just to reassure himself that they're doing okay. He does it sort of as a conscience-absolving exercise, because Lily is being difficult and refusing to accept his natural protectiveness, so instead he just drops in to make sure that the others are alright.

They are, for the most part, and he's most impressed by Lucy, who has settled down contentedly as the only Weasley in Hufflepuff and made firm friends with the other girls in her dorm.

There's a blonde girl in particular, who Albus doesn't know the name of. He thinks she's good for Lucy, with her kind heart and gentle touch, always reassuring her friend that she's just as good as Molly, no matter what she thinks.

Apparently she makes really good cakes, too.

_third and fourth year_

She still sees him when he's not looking, except she's beginning to mature a bit and not feel helpless and voiceless whenever he's in the same room. She grows her hair out and learns to wear make-up and thinks that maybe she's starting to get over him, at least slightly.

And then he gets a girlfriend with brown hair and a pretty smile, and she cries for two hours.

No, she's not over him at all.

_switch_

Elissa is dark-haired and pretty and she has a bewitching smile and, Merlin, he's been in love with her since March the year before when he partnered her in Potions (which he's terrible at, by the way) and she saved their potion from certain death when he nearly added powdered beetle eyes instead of ground beetle wing.

He's almost disbelieving when she says yes to his offer of a date to Hogsmeade one cold November weekend, and he floats around school on a haze of euphoria for days afterwards.

He thinks then that maybe Elissa's the _one_.

_fourth and fifth year_

Aged fourteen, Katie decides that she would very much like to be grown-up now. She abandons her jeans and t-shirts in favour of the skirts and pretty tops that Lucy and Lauren help her pick out, learning to swing her hips in just the right way.

She gets her first kiss from a boy who's kind (not Albus) with pretty eyes (not Albus) and a good sense of right and wrong (and he's not Albus).

She gets taller (oh, _finally_) and learns to walk in high-heels and all sorts of other things, and she decides that she can deal with this crush on Albus and just move on and ignore him.

The next time he gets a girlfriend, she doesn't cry (much).

_switch_

Elissa dumps him and it doesn't particularly bother him, because after all he's Albus and he's the youngest son of Harry Potter and he's always going to have girls swarming around him whether he likes it or not.

He takes advantage of this wildly, giving into the temptation of his voracious teenage boy hormones and taking the hearts of the girls who succumb to him with his greengreen eyes and gentle touch.

He spares a moment now and then to wonder why Lucy seems to hate him so much at the moment, but he doesn't make the connection between her best friend's red-rimmed eyes and the pretty black-haired girl currently sitting so close to him he hasn't got even a hint of personal space, her hand in his and her head on his shoulder.

For a boy who's always _looking_, he doesn't do much seeing.

_fifth and sixth year_

She watches him work through girls, at the same time detesting their lack of self-respect in their willingness to jump into bed with him and feeling wildly envious of them, every single one.

But suddenly one day there's no girl with him at all, and she notices (without meaning to) that every day for a month there's no girl with an added bounce in her step that just has _Albus Potter _scrawled all over it.

She can't really fathom it, to be honest, because he doesn't have the _attitude _of the sort of boy who can get into (and has been into) the pants of most of the girls in Hogwarts. Well, the ones that are old enough, anyway.

He's still kind and friendly and quiet and as exasperated as ever with his two best friends. He seems genuinely surprised by his easy popularity – and even more surprised because it's _his _popularity, not his name's – and his smiles come quickly and easily and innocently and, heavens, this isn't doing much for helping her to get over him.

Because Lucy is determined to help her friend get over this ridiculously long-standing crush, she invites Katie to spend a few weeks during the summer at her house. As this period will coincide with Lily's birthday, Katie will get to attend the party where Albus will also be, where there will be fewer girls to distract his attention.

"We're going to make you _beautiful_, Kate," Lucy promises, and the morning before the party Lucy's cousins Roxanne and Dominique floo over to help (they don't dare tell Lily because she doesn't like girls actually finding her brother attractive) and they poke and prod at her, and twist her hair and spend hours over her make-up and dress her more carefully than a Barbie-doll, and when they're finished and they let her look in the mirror, she feels _powerful._

_switch_

Albus is truthfully nothing but _bored _at Lily's birthday party, because Scorpius is off winding up Rose and his other cousins are variously engaged, either dancing wildly with Lily to the sounds of Hugo's (admittedly extremely impressive) Muggle band, or chatting up members of the opposite sex in the shadows.

The adults are racing around to ensure that nobody is using magic in front of Hugo's Muggle bandmates, forestalling complaints with the reminder that Lily agreed to no magic as a condition of having the band and if they don't like it they can just leave.

Al hangs around in the shadow of the cherry tree to one side of the big garden, watching the colourful spinning lights and listening to Hugo's voice singing confidently over the music, and feels inordinately proud of his little cousin, who's always been so quiet and finally broken out.

And then a girl approaches him. She's tall and blonde and pretty, with crystalcrystal green eyes and the sort of body that would usually make him take a second look. He's sure she's familiar somehow, though, and he could swear he's seen her around –

"Hello. I'm Katie," she says, and understanding clears his expression.

"Lucy's friend," he replies, offering his hand for her to shake. She regards it for a moment, a blush starting to stain her cheeks, and then she smiles and takes it.

"Yes. And you're Lucy's cousin."

She's looking at him with something that he's all too used to seeing – except, in this familiar little stranger with the wide eyes, there's some invisible layer of innocence that he's definitely not used to.

"Al," he confirms, smiling back at her, and her blush spreads and she looks like she might explode with nerves and excitement. "I've seen you around school."

She beams, and somehow she's perfectly easy to talk to and Al finds himself spending most of the night under that cherry tree, talking about stars and politics and cakes and other unimportant things.

For some reason, that one conversation is the only one he properly remembers.

_sixth and seventh year_

They return to school and she's more confident in herself now, knowing that she can capture his attention and talk to him and not scream with delight or something equally embarrassing.

She smiles at him when she sees him around school now – and he _sees _her when he's looking, and that's beginning to be enough.

_switch_

For some reason, he doesn't stop seeing her around – during lunch, in the corridors, in the library, watching the Quidditch – and his head is full of her even as he tries to persuade himself that this means _nothing _and to focus instead on the girls with the too-knowing eyes who worm their way into his bed every now and again.

But then, finally, one day he simply cannot bear it, and he heads to the library and takes a seat at the table she's working at, smiling across at her and offering her a flower.

"Good evening," he says pleasantly, and she accepts the flower with a hesitant sort of disbelief.

"Good evening," she replies.

_the beginning._

_

* * *

_

**a/n** if you liked it, I'm begging you not to favourite without reviewing!


	20. TeddyDominique

**a/n**: so it's been ages, far far too long, and I'm embarrassed and I really hope you guys can forgive me. Inspiration just fled and then I was ill and school steals my soul and… as many excuses as you like.

Anyway, I'm sorry, and here's the next instalment. I actually surprised myself by quite liking this pairing, so that's a plus.

Also, thanks to Aiiimy, I'm totally shipping TeddyMolly now. Obviously TeddyLily is still my top-notch pairing, but TeddyMolly… well it's coming pretty close.

**pairing**: TeddyDominique  
**words**: 1559

* * *

**essays on morality**  
and he told me that i'd done alright  
kissed me 'til the morning light.  
_- Samson, Regina Spektor_

_

* * *

_

She blames the headmaster, really. Because, after all, it was his decision to hire Teddy, and – well, the story goes from there. She reckons it should be illegal or something to hire someone who is first of all _so _good-looking and second of all her sister's ex-boyfriend.

Her sister's _very _ex-boyfriend.

(Because, yeah, there are degrees of ex-ness now, got a problem with that?)

And it starts with little things – flicking paper at him when his back is turned in class, watching him unintentionally from the Gryffindor table during meal times, never doing homework so he can ask to stay behind after class and then rant about her lack of respect and how she's undermining his authority.

It surprises her because he's so impassioned about this, about this whole teaching lark, and she'd been thinking that it was just a way of passing the time until he found something he _really _wanted to do.

But he's genuinely angry and he looks like he means it when he demands that she call him sir (-"I'm your _teacher _now, Dominique, and you have to start treating me like it"-) and she ignores his advice but secretly brings it to the forefront of her mind to think about when she has nothing else to do.

And so she can understand the look of resignation on his face when he opens the door to his chambers at two o' clock in the morning and she's standing there, hair all askew and the straps of her pyjama top slipping down off one slender shoulder.

"What?" he asks without preamble, because prevaricating is not a good idea when it's two am and she's sixteen and… what was his point again?

"I was thinking," she announces, and he notices that she's clutching a stuffed toy rabbit in her hands so tightly he thinks she must not realise she's still carrying it, "and I don't think it's fair the way you treat me."

He leans his shoulder against the doorframe and he folds his arms and he looks down at her and, agonisingly slowly, raises one of his eyebrows.

"You're going to have to expand on that one for me."

"I mean," she continues, and there's a slow flush creeping up from the neckline of her pyjama vest top to gather in the tips of her ears and she's battling gamely on, "You're trying so hard to treat me like you treat all the others that you're treating me worse."

"You what?" he inquires, and now he's genuinely confused and she's blushing fully and it's still two in the morning and he has lessons to teach in the morning and she's sixteen and… she's sixteen.

"It's like, you're worried that you'll give me preferential treatment because of your whole thing with my family and most especially with Vic, so you make up for it by being horrible to me."

"I do not," he protests instantly, honour wounded, but she just rolls her eyes and her legs are very long under the pyjama shorts and isn't she _freezing_?

"You do too," she retorts, and her messy hair is catching the shine of the torches as he pretends he doesn't notice, "You don't even make Mike Demler copy out his homework if he does it wrong, and you _hate _him."

"Go back to bed, Dominique," he commands wearily, passing a hand across his face because it's two am and she's practically naked and, hell, he's thinking in circles now. "I cannot deal with this right now."

"Please," she says, and her voice is terribly quiet in the arching darkness of the corridor, "Just be nicer to me. I don't like you being like this. You used to be kind to me."

He turns back and she's shivering slightly in the coldness of the empty school and her eyes are the exact colour of the thunderclouds that were looming oppressively from the ceiling of the Great Hall that evening and it's all shades of _Lolita _as he sighs.

"Why don't you come in?" he suggests, and suddenly her face is cracking out into a wide, monkeyish grin and as he stands back to let her walk past him there's a whole sermon on morality just waiting in the wings.

* * *

"I think you should keep this place tidier," she informs him ten minutes later when she's sitting cross-legged on his sofa with a mug of hot chocolate clutched in both hands and an expression of mild disgust on her face as she examines every inch of his living area. "I mean, I'm all for chaos and disorder, but this is just frankly embarrassing."

"Have you warmed up yet?" he inquires, ignoring her entirely, and she nods and shivers simultaneously, and he rolls his eyes and gets up, disappearing into his sleeping quarters to find the blanket from his bed, returning to her and standing in front of her to offer it up.

"I'm fine, honest," she promises, eyes wide and truthful and warm, "But it's nice to know you care."

He ignores this too, and instead leans over to wrap the blanket firmly around her, pretending that her skin isn't the softest he's ever felt because there's that thing about morality and getting fired and, um, she's still just sixteen and he's still her teacher.

She says nothing, just watches his face as he wraps her up snugly, and when he glances up to meet her eyes she looks oddly amused.

"What?" he inquires, at a loss as to why there's a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Have I got something on my face?"

"No, it's just," she begins, tilting her head up at him as he moves away self-consciously and takes a seat in the armchair opposite her, "You think you're so macho but you're really a big softie underneath."

"I'll give you enough detentions to last you until you're thirty if you tell anyone that," he threatens, unable to quite hide his grin, lazily setting his kettle to boil with his wand.

"Oh, I'm quaking in my boots," she replies with a fake, overdramatic shudder, and Teddy resists a laugh and folds his arms instead.

"I'm sorry I haven't been nice to you," he says quietly, levitating a mug of tea towards her. "You're right – I don't want to give you accidental preferential treatment."

"But you're over Vic," Dominique retorts validly, plucking the tea out of the air and cradling it between her palms, longlong legs folded up under her blanket, "So in fact if anything you should be trying not to treat me _worse _because you hate her now."

"I don't hate her now," Teddy informs her evenly, taking a sip of his own tea and daring to meet her eyes, "I don't hate her and I don't love her. We're… friends, I guess. Or at least on friendly terms. 'Cause she's got that Matthew guy and all, and they seem very happy together."

"His dog keeps eating all her mail," Dominique informs him out of the blue, and there's a wicked sparkle in those prettypretty eyes now. "And I totally _didn't_ train him to do that."

"Domi_nique_," Teddy admonishes, and she just laughs and suddenly she's getting up, dragging her blanket with her as she moves to snuggle down onto the sofa next to him. He moves away automatically, because there's that whole thing about morality and she's only sixteen and he _wishes _his brain would come up with new arguments.

"See, you're not even comfortable with me sitting this close," she informs him somewhat petulantly, and when he dares to look at her she's got her arms crossed and she's scowling, brows drawn heavily over her stormy eyes, "And you don't move away when Lily or Rose sit like that."

"That's… that's different," he manages to force out, taking deep, even breaths from between clenched teeth as her fingertips move up to drag the strap of her top back into place yet again.

"Different _how_?" she demands, and he can sense that she's not going to let this one go, and she's leaning closer and she's got one hand on his knee and the other on the sofa next to his head and her breath is coming faster and –

He damns himself, and kisses her. Kisses her hard and bruisingly, his hands going to cradle the back of her head, and it's what she thinks she wants and he knows she won't want it, not really, but for the moment she's responding with alacrity, her lips hungry and soft beneath his, her other hand moving from his knee to wind around his neck, and somehow she's pulled them both so he's lying on top of her and this is so immoral he doesn't know what to do with himself.

"We _can't_, Dominique," he whispers when she finally draws back, her head dropping onto the cushion below and her hair spreading out around her like a carpet of fire, "This is wrong on so many levels."

"But not on all of them," she replies gently, her fingers doing something sinful to a spot on the back of his neck, and he's almost cross-eyed with pleasure as he gives up on morality and bends to kiss her again, pressing her firmly into the sofa beneath them.

After all, one kiss (or twenty) can't hurt, right?

* * *

**a/n**: I'm still begging you not to favourite without reviewing, please and thank you!


	21. LouisJenny

**a/n**: so I decided to bump Louis up two years for this one. I know I said I was originally writing him in the same year as Lucy and Molly, but I've changed my mind (because I can). So now he's in the same year as James and Jenny.

For Amy is rockin, because she loves Louis and because she needs some stories to fill up "the truth i".

**pairing**: LouisJenny  
**words**: 820

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**the trouble with men  
**so revealing that i cannot hide  
when you settle up the score.  
_- Through the Fire, Larry Greene_

_

* * *

_

He slides onto the Gryffindor bench between her and James, and he pretends to need very urgently to talk to his cousin, but all the while the only thing he's really focused on is the feel of her thigh against his and the gentle warmth of her presence.

* * *

"Hey, Weasley," she calls, and he spins instantly, tie loosened a perfectly nonchalant amount and his books held under one arm.

"What's eating you, Rogers?" he inquires when she finally catches up with him, and she rolls her eyes and pushes her longlong hair irritably behind her ear and falls into step beside him.

"I would really like to know why Rachel is up in our dorm crying her eyes out."

Louis pauses to mentally scroll through a list of girls that she might be talking about, and then his expression brightens as the metaphorical lightbulb flashes in his head, "Rachel Jones?"

"No, fuckwit," Jenny replies, giving him a punch in the upper arm for emphasis, "Rachel Beckwith – your _girlfriend_, remember?"

Louis raises his eyebrows at her, and she meets him with a glare, arms folded and brow creased.

"My _ex-_girlfriend," he stresses politely, and she gives a huge sigh and an exasperated roll of the eyes and punches him again, oblivious to his overdramatic wince of pain.

"That explains the crying," she informs him wearily, dropping into deep thought. "So when did you break up with her?"

"In Charms," Louis replies, shrugging and very obviously checking out a sixth-year Hufflepuff with a terribly short skirt. Jenny doesn't even bother punching him this time, just gives one of the 'tut's that James swears terrify him more than the idea of his parents finding out about his T in Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Bearing this in mind, Louis wisely keeps quiet for a few minutes and they walk in silence, turning two corners and passing multiple doors. Louis keeps stealing glances at her, quite unintentionally, and she's walking with her brow slightly furrowed and her brown eyes focused, looking like she's thinking very hard.

"She was really clingy," Louis ventures finally, unable to keep quiet a moment longer, "Always wanting to know what I'd been doing and everything. And I can't be held down, you know?"

She raises her eyes heavenward and mutters "_Men_" in an incredibly weary tone, and Louis smirks slightly and nudges her playfully in the side.

"C'mon, Rogers, don't tell me you wouldn't get annoyed by it too."

"Not enough to dump someone in the middle of a _Charms _class!" she retorts in a hiss, whirling on him suddenly, brown hair flying. "You really are something else, you know."

"Thank you," he replies with a wink and a cocky grin, and suddenly she's flying at him and pummelling every inch of him she can reach, her hair a messy cloud around her face and her fists flying.

"Fucking hell, Jennifer!" he exclaims when he's got her wrists captured in his, his books scattered in a messy arc behind him, both of their breathing wild, "Are you actually _insane_?"

"You just – urgh – _boys_," she hisses, struggling half-heartedly to free her hands, blowing hair out of her mouth, "You're all so – so bloody _heartless _and you just have no respect and you think it's okay to just be _dicks _and actually –"

"I'm appreciating the feminism lecture," Louis cuts across her smoothly, grin back in place, "But I do actually have other things to do, so if you wouldn't mind…"

He trails off, and suddenly she's meeting his eyes and her face is _furious _and Louis realises that he may have just made a big mistake. Because, the thing is, he can get any girl he wants, but she's always been the _one_ that belonged irrevocably to James, and also for some reason the only girl that Louis has ever wanted to genuinely impress.

"How about I make it up to you?" he presses suddenly, rightly cautious, and is pleased to see her looking slightly taken aback. "Dinner, Hogsmeade, next weekend?"

"Are you _asking me out_, Weasley?" she inquires in total shock, and Louis senses that now might be a good time to release her wrists, so he does and she reclaims them, looking too shell-shocked to continue her assault.

"Yes, Rogers, I do believe I am," he replies calmly, meeting her eyes squarely and (almost) fearlessly, blue into brown. She stays very quiet for a few moments, and then suddenly she's folding her arms.

"No way in hell, Weasley," she says firmly, her whole expression daring him to push it, "Me plus you plus date equals no-go area. I'm James' best friend, remember? He'd kill me if I went out with one of his family. Especially _you_."

And with that she turns and walks away – but she's smiling and blushing slightly, and when Louis gathers his scattered books up and sets off in the opposite direction, he's smiling too.

* * *

**a/n**: I'm still begging you not to favourite without leaving a review!


	22. HugoChloe

**a/n**: another first-person because, okay, I admit it, they're too much fun for words. This one focusing on Chloe Nott, because I think I know her best.

**pairing**: HugoChloe  
**words**: 1695

* * *

**I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked**  
i won't mind if you take off all your clothes  
come on, take them off.  
_- I Like You So Much Better, Ida Maria_

_

* * *

_

I have a Cunning Plan (but you mustn't tell Lily).

It basically involves myself, her chum Lysander, the Black Lake, multiple expletives and several weeks worth of detentions.

It's going to be worth it, though, both for the look on her face and the sight of our dear friend Professor Lightbody's expression.

I have, naturally, roped in Dominique, Fred, and Roxanne to aid me in this magnificent undertaking. I asked Hugo to join us, but he said no. He even had the nerve to act as though I was crazy for asking, can you imagine? I mean, I get the whole moody-musician-thing, I really do. But I think he might be taking it a bit too far. We're only fifteen, after all. We can't really be deep about much yet.

Anyway, I'm not here to rant about Hugo. What I _am _here to explain my Cunning Plan. It's actually rather brilliant, I cannot lie.

Basically, to give you the gist of it, I'm going to trick Lysander out into the Black Lake. And then I'm going to try to feed him to the Giant Squid.

In _jest_, of course! Don't look at me like that! Everyone knows the Giant Squid is a herbivore, gosh. Or, at least, all it eats are grindylows. I don't know whether that counts as a herbivore, I failed Care of Magical Creatures.

This is all actually a carefully constructed Scheme of Revenge, by the way. Schemes of Revenge always make Cunning Plans, like, a _million _times better.

Anyway, my Cunning Plan is nearly entirely in place. I have rigged up my rope system through a complicated method of bullying Lily's brother Albus (who is always up for anything that will annoy his sister) into using his funky Seventh-Year magic to conjure up ropes, invisible-ify them, and then suspend them in a Complicated System.

And now we are both crouched in a bush waiting for Lysander and Lily to take the bait of the note I sent Lily in Transfig earlier telling her about my 'lakeside picnic' to 'celebrate my first O in DADA'.

(This is a lie. I have never received a DADA O in my life. She is a crap friend for not knowing this.)

Next to me, Albus is being a twat, actually _giggling _and shit. I turn slightly to glare at him, the effect rather ruined by the fact that I have so many leaves in my head I look like I have tried (and failed) to transfigure myself into a tree.

He seems to get the gist, however, quietening down.

I hear voices suddenly, and have to resist jumping up and down in mad delight as Lysander and Lily wander into view. I must remain sophisticated and Slytherin at all times.

I nearly jump out of my skin as someone arrives in the bush with us, only just avoiding pushing us out altogether and ruining my whole plan.

I am already mid-hex by the time I am whirling around, but Albus catches my wrist and stops me. I continue in my whirl because my hair looks awesome when I do this, and find myself face-to-face with Mr. 'I'm-too-cool-for-this' Hugo Weasley. I smooth my hair back with an air of injured dignity, tucking it behind my ear.

Then Albus jabs me urgently in the side and Hugo shoves in between us to watch as Lily and Lysander hesitate on the bank, looking around to try to work out where we are.

We have to shuffle around to make room for Hugo, and I am fast losing patience.

"Thought you'd come then, huh?" I inquire, and he turns and tips a wink at me that definitely _doesn't _make me blush, because I'm far too cool for that. Honestly.

"Well, seeing Lysander nearly get eaten by the Giant Squid isn't something I'll ever have the chance to see again," he points out, and I scowl until I realise that he has a very valid point. So I give him my widest, scariest grin, and turn my attention back to the pair on the lake, until I remember –

"_How do you know about my Cunning Plan_?" I hiss at Hugo, rounding on him, and he just grins in an infuriatingly unruffled manner.

"Al told me."

"You –" I begin, but I have no chance to begin my abuse of Al because a hand is being clamped across my mouth and I am all ready to bite it – Hugo won't be expecting that, haha! – but then I notice that Lysander is about _one teeny step _from springing the trap and –

_Yes_! _RESULT_!

He is catapulted into the air and goes flying out into the middle of the lake as Lily screams. Out of nowhere, the Giant Squid erupts to the surface, mouth gaping, and I fall out of the bush I am laughing so hard.

Lily is screaming like she wants to break the sound barrier, and as he flies Lysander isn't sounding much more manly.

Al drags me hastily upright so that I can watch, and I am deeply proud of the brilliance of my plan when the Squid closes its mouth at the last minute and catches Lysander neatly with one tentacle. It regards him calmly for a moment, and it is a good thing that Lily is so absorbed in what is going on that she doesn't even register myself, Al and Hugo behind her near dying of laughter.

The Squid then dunks Lysander thoroughly – have I mentioned that I love that animal? It took on board _everything _I asked it to do – and then places him a few metres from the shore so he has to swim the last bit.

I fall on top of Hugo, my legs too weak from mirth to support me. He doesn't notice, he is clutching his stomach and gasping "Oh, I can't breathe!"

I feel very proud, because Hugo is notoriously serious, and it takes something seriously funny to make him laugh.

Lysander squelches Lily-ward, and suddenly both of them notice us. I would run, but I can't even stand so that is out of the question.

"You… you… you…" Lily splutters incoherently, and next to her Lysander is growing steadily redder and redder with anger. I level a hard look at Lily, and suddenly notice that she, too, is trying to hold back laughter.

Lysander, bless him, does look ridiculous – very damp and very unimpressed.

"I see you're bringing back the 'drowned-poodle-chic" look, Lysander," I compliment once I have a modicum of control over my breathing. His brows nearly meet, and suddenly I and Hugo find ourselves in the water of the lake, trying to work out how we got there until we spot Lysander and Lily standing on the shore with their wands outstretched and big smirks written across their stupid smug faces.

I swear at them so hard I slip under water and Hugo has to haul me back up, couching and spluttering, so I don't drown. By the time I have expelled all the water from my lungs the two on the shore have scarpered, and neither is Al anywhere to be seen, the bastard.

"C'mon," Hugo says, and I follow him in an ungracious breaststroke (teehee, breast) over to the bank and pull myself out. He gets out next to me, and we sit and shiver on the shore for a moment, too wet to do much.

"I'll get them for this," I vow, and Hugo laughs through his chattering teeth and wishes me luck. We stay like this for another few moments, and then the sun thankfully starts to warm us a little.

Suddenly Hugo is stripping off his jumper next to me and I am jumping to my feet with a cry of horror.

"Steady on," he tells me with a broad grin – he's laughing at me, the fucker – "I'm not getting naked, don't worry. Just going to get the worst of it off so it can dry. You probably ought to do the same. The teachers'll have a fit if we go back in looking like this."

"Curse your Ravenclaw logic," I tell him, trying not to notice that as he pulls his tie and shirt off, he has a _really _nicely toned abdomen. This is ridiculous – he's _Hugo_. He's not _allowed _to be attractive! It must be illegal or something.

"C'mon, Nott, strip," he teases, and I glare at him as I pull off my jumper. He pauses, evidently astonished that I am actually doing so. Grinning now, I take off my tie – two can play at this game, loser! – and neatly unbutton my shirt and pull it off before stepping out of my skirt and tights so I am standing there in nothing but a damp vest, a bra and knickers.

He gulps, but he now realises that if he does not wish his man-card to be invalidated he is also going to have to get right down to his underwear.

Once we are both standing there I take a minute to enjoy the awkwardness and try to not notice how good-looking he is – because, half-naked, he really _is_ – and then begin to regret losing my wand, because now would be a really good time to try out those drying spells I half-memorised a few months ago.

"So," he says, and I raise an eyebrow effortlessly at him.

"So," I repeat, and he sighs as he realises that we have officially run out of conversation topics.

"This was fun," he ventures finally, and I smirk and fold my arms.

"Yeah, it was."

"Okay."

"Okay."

We stand there like awkward lemons for a few moments more, beginning to finally dry. I am confident that I will win this little awkward-off, though – I spend all my time with Lily and Dominique, I have far more practise at it.

After only a short time it becomes too much for him and with a muttered excuse he clambers back into his still-damp trousers and legs it up to the castle.

I grin and pull on my shirt and skirt before following him at a more leisurely pace.

Weasley boys really are far too much fun.

* * *

**a/n**: if you liked this enough to favourite, please don't do so without leaving a review!


	23. JennyLysander

**a/n**: oh, I know, it's been so long. I'm so sorry. I wish I had a good excuse.

Different personality for Lysander in this one, just to warn you. I needed inspiration any way possible.

**Words**: 2997

* * *

if we had days**  
jennylysander**

your freezing speech bubbles seem to hold your words aloft  
i want the smoky clouds of laughter to swim about me forever more  
_- The Planets Bend Between Us, Snow Patrol_

* * *

She supposes that if there was one thing she first noticed about him it would be his laugh. An odd thing to notice, she's been told in the past, because Lysander is notorious for not laughing much. He's quiet and almost painfully shy and earning his trust gives you the same thrill as persuading a unicorn to let you touch it.

He's been at the hands of sparse love growing up, with nobody to depend on for what his parents never had the thought to bestow upon him. He's been watching the world through mistrustful eyes for years now and it doesn't matter how much the Weasley women mother him – he has been practically motherless most of his life and he doesn't know how to change this way of being.

She has known him for some time now – he attends the Weasley-Potter gatherings that James often drags her to, hovering in a corner while his brother mingles, clear blue eyes missing nothing as they dart this way and that. She first sees him when he is ten and she is eleven, but she doesn't notice him until he is newly thirteen and she is the same age, a few months older. She is sitting under a tree in the garden of The Burrow, and all of a sudden a loud, infectious chuckle sounds from a corner. Her head snaps to find the source, and she discovers Lysander roaring with laughter, little Lily next to him looking mightily pleased with herself.

She notices him more from then on, keeping an eye out at Hogwarts to check what he's up to and worrying about his solitude. In four years, she only sees him laugh twice.

;;

Jenny's heart first goes out to him on a Wednesday. She's wandering down a corridor, alone for once (at seventeen, there are still only so many of James' fart jokes she can take before she needs to get away), and she rounds a corner to find Lysander curled up on a ledge in front of a window, his head leaning against the glass pane, glassy eyes staring unseeingly out onto the grounds.

"Hey," she says a trifle uncertainly, hesitating in the middle of the hallway, "Are you okay?"

He turns to look at her, wiping his nose inelegantly on his jumper sleeve, blonde curls awry and expression closed and uncommunicative as he replies, "Fine. Thanks for asking."

She dithers for a moment longer – she could pretend not to notice the tearstain down his right cheek and how white his knuckles are on the hand clenched into a fist against the stone. It would be easy and probably what he wants, she knows that.

Instead she slides onto the seat next to him and drags up her legs to sit cross-legged opposite him, brown-eyed gaze direct and sympathetic.

"You're lying."

"It's not an action particular to Slytherins, you know," he informs her acidly, and her expression must register her hurt because a second later he's grimacing and wiping his face again and looking abject with misery, "I'm sorry. That was rude. I can't – I don't… I'm not really in the mood for conversation."

"You want to talk about it?" Jenny inquires, tilting her head slightly, ponytail falling into the space behind her shoulder. His eyes flick to it briefly, almost thoughtfully, and then they return to her face, clear and private.

"No thank you," he says firmly, already turning to look back out of the window, "It's… it's private."

"Okay," she says easily, clambering off the bench, smiling slightly at his look of surprise, "But if you ever do, let me know. I'd like to talk to you."

;;

He finds her at breakfast several weeks later, on a Friday. He sits down across from her nervously, looking like he's had several arguments with himself to try to dissuade himself, and he fiddles with his tie for a good minute before he finally speaks.

"Can you… can you help me with something?" he asks eventually, staring down at his hands, a blush starting to creep across his cheeks.

"Sure," she replies instantly, smiling encouragingly, "Fire away."

"It's just," he begins, eyes darting up to look at her and flicking away again before he seems to muster his courage and meet her gaze, "It's just that it's my mum's birthday soon and I don't know what to get her. Usually Lorcan helps me but he's kind of busy with his new girlfriend and I don't have anybody else to ask."

Jenny smiles slightly, and munches thoughtfully on a spoonful of Cornflakes, and then she swallows and beams as an idea occurs to her.

"I will do you a deal," she informs him seriously, pointing her spoon at him for extra effect, "I'll help you if you'll go to Hogsmeade with me next weekend. On a date," she adds for clarification, in case he thinks this is some friends thing. She knows she is being forward, but she's kind of helplessly attracted to this quiet blue-eyed boy.

He appears momentarily lost for words, mouthing like a fish, until he gets his act together and shuts his mouth, staring across at her mutely.

"God, is the idea really _that _repugnant?" she inquires with a mock-hurt expression, "I mean, I know I'm probably not your type or something, but –"

"No," he cuts her off hastily, and suddenly she's rewarded with a rare, shy smile, "It's just – I just… I think… I've never been on a date before. I'd love to go with you. Please."

And, just like that, her heart goes out to him again.

;;

She meets him in the Entrance Hall, fully wrapped up against the cold. James has been pestering her about her 'mystery guy' since five o' clock the afternoon before and Jenny is now so sick of him that when he prods her in the back for the fiftieth time and demands his name, she whirls on him, punches him hard in the arm, and snaps, "It's Lysander Scamander, you arse, and if you say anything right now I'll hit you again."

James, this time, is the one mouthing helplessly, and Jenny grins and takes advantage of his distraction to hurry across to Lysander, who has just appeared from the direction of the Great Hall. He looks like he can't stop smiling, hands jammed into the pockets of his coat, and Jenny smiles back as she reaches him and wordlessly inclines her head to indicate they should start walking.

Behind her, James is prevented from following them and demanding explanations by his sister, who is extremely insistent that he needs to buy her lots of chocolate from Honeyduke's for no good reason.

On the way to Hogsmeade, Jenny helps Lysander mull over ideas for a present for his mother, certain that by the time they reach The Three Broomsticks they'll have come up with something.

They've just reached the village when Lysander throws up his hands helplessly, declaring, "We'll never think of _anything_!"

"No, no, we will," Jenny insists, laughing and grabbing at his hands, pulling them down and clutching them in her own for a moment, eyes sparkling from the cold, "We just have to think this through logically, yeah?"

He looks at her and she feels for a second that he's looking straight through her, and then he quietly withdraws his hands and shoves them back inside his pockets, not meeting her gaze as he carries on walking, kicking up snow.

"Thing is," he says suddenly after a long silence, "Thing is I don't think I know her at all. Does that make me a bad person? I don't know what she loves, what her favourite perfume is, whether she likes books or art or – or… or _camping equipment_, for Merlin's sake! I just… I don't know at all. I'm a horrible son."

Jenny finds herself rushing to catch up with him, almost floored by his sudden outburst, and there's a sudden flicker of anger burning through him as she grabs his sleeve in a gloved hand and wrenches him around to face her with a strength you would not expect from a girl so slim.

"You stop right there, Scamander," she says firmly, steel in her tone, "That does _not _make you a bad person. You are one of the goodest people I ever knew –" he winces for her poor grammar and she ignores him as she ignores all Ravenclaws when they do that "– and if you don't know things about your mother that is _not _your fault, you got it? Was she just… I dunno, not around when you grew up or something?"

He looks at her steadily, not even noticing her hand on his arm, and there is no emotion in his voice as he replies, "She was. A bit. In between expeditions and stuff. We lived with our grandfather mostly."

Jenny's eyes narrow and her brows come down as she processes this new piece of information, hopefully inquiring, "Your dad's dad?"

"No, mum's dad," he says as though they are merely discussing the weather, "Dad's dad died ages ago. He wasn't too bad a guardian though, honestly. I mean, we're independent and, like, whole and not missing body parts and stuff now, right?"

Jenny's fingers tighten spasmodically on his sleeve as she recalls all of James and Louis' stories about crazy Xenophilius Lovegood and his bizarre way of living, and her eyes are inexplicably filling with tears for him as he turns away, expressionless as he inquires, "Weren't we heading for The Three Broomsticks?"

She lets him go and walks alongside him in silence, not chancing speaking for fear of her voice wobbling. She manages to pull herself together to be charming and cheerful and flirtatious for the afternoon, and he chuckles and blushes and flirts awkwardly back until they're both laughing so hard they can't breathe, and she almost forgets the sadness in his eyes until they're back at the castle and he shyly presses a kiss into her cheek and thanks her for the date and disappears off upstairs.

She watches him go and feels the tears rising again. She battles them down all the way to Gryffindor Tower because it's not her place to cry for him, and she manages to keep them in until she's alone in her dormitory and then she pulls her duvet over her head and cries until there is a damp circle on her sheets from her tears.

;;

She starts hanging out with him regularly, ditching James in favour of her blue-eyed Ravenclaw boy, teasing him and gradually, piece by piece, drawing him out of his reclusive shell until he's flirting back at her with confidence, laughter in his voice as he mocks her lack of ability to concentrate on anything.

She's used to being the one to make all the moves with him, so she is so shocked she can't react when he first kisses her. He's hesitant and awkward and fumbling when he reaches for her, drawing her to him when they're standing alone outside the kitchens, bending his head towards hers and shyly moving his mouth to press against hers.

"I'm sorry," he apologises instantly when he pulls back and she has not moved, one hand moving to her lips as she regards him steadily. His face is panic-stricken, eyes not meeting hers as he blushes and starts gabbling, "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have… I wasn't thinking, I just – I thought maybe –"

"Shh," she commands firmly, and suddenly she's winding her arms around his neck and pulling him back to her, pressing herself against every inch of him as she draws him into a second kiss, letting him explore the sensations as his hands come to rest on her waist, his breathing harsh in the arching silence of the corridor when they finally part.

He stands there and looks down at her for a long while, his hands burning hunger into her skin through the layers of her clothes, and she realises she has it bad when his mouth pulls to the side in a self-conscious smile and she can't tear her eyes away from him, can't imagine pulling out of his embrace, can't imagine not being this close to him, forever.

"Crap," she murmurs, and then she's kissing him again and thinking that maybe she'd be pretty cool with staying like this for the rest of her life.

;;

She meets his parents one day quite by accident. It's July, one of those lazy hazy days where the sun seems to hang forever in the sky, turning the clouds pink and red as evening creeps up over the world. The whole of the Potter-Weasley clan is at The Burrow for James' father's birthday, along with the Longbottoms and Teddy Lupin and various others that Jenny's learnt over the years tend to be included in these sorts of things.

She is there by invitation from James, who has finally forgiven her for going out with Lysander and who has spent a large proportion of the day totally ignoring her in favour of one of his cousin Victoire's friends who seems slightly amused but also vaguely irritated by the eighteen-year-old who keeps trying to tell her jokes about leprechauns and centaurs.

Jenny is content with this situation, happy to sit to one side of the big party and observe in amusement as the cousins wind each other and the adults up, busily corrupting the younger Longbottom children and merrily making mischief.

She is startled out of her quiet reverie by the arrival of a family of four, two blonde-haired boys and their blonde-haired mother, shepherded in by an impossible tall man with the broadest smile Jenny's ever seen.

"Rolf!" Ginny Potter exclaims in delight, fighting her way out of a circle of Harry's friends from the Auror department and heading over to greet him and his family, "Luna! With the boys, too. How are you all?"

Ginny leads Rolf and Luna away chattering nineteen-to-the-dozen, and Lorcan is instantly tugged off into the fray by Lucy and Dominique Weasley. Lysander is left by himself, and remains oblivious to Lily Potter's shouts from the other side of the garden as he scans the milling crowd restlessly. Jenny waits, and sure enough a big beam alights on his face as he catches sight of her, instantly starting to shove his way through the hordes towards her.

"I was worried you weren't here," he informs her breathlessly once he gets to her, reaching for her instantly and hugging her tightly, "I wanted to surprise you! Mum and Dad decided to come this morning, they just got back from a trip to – I think maybe Guatemala."

She hugs him back automatically, but memories of all those letters he's written her this summer (–"_Mum and Dad should be back for the fifteenth, which means we can make that play Lorcan wanted to see_" "_Mum and Dad got held up in Peru so Lorcan and I went to the play by ourselves_" "_Mum and Dad found possible traces of nargles in Venezuela, probably won't make it back for September 1__st__ to see us off for school_"–) are boiling in her mind and making her see red and that familiar temper is rising and rage is seething through her suddenly, hot and thick and determined.

"Did they tell you they were coming back?" she asks him shortly, pulling her head back from his neck and frowning up at him, "Any warning this time?"

"Jenny," he says quietly, and he sounds a little like he's pleading, "Don't do this. Not today."

"Don't _what_?" she demands fiercely, not even bothering to lower her voice – shouting is not exactly out-of-place at these sort of gatherings, "Don't judge them for practically _abandoning _their children? Don't be furious at them for leaving you? Don't let them know how _totally _unacceptable it is to leave _five-year-olds _with a man who can barely take care of himself, let alone two children? Don't hate them for not seeing how _amazing _you are, how –"

"Lysander, your friend is angry," a dreamy voice says behind Jenny, and she whirls from the protective cage of Lysander's arms to find his mother gazing at her with an abstracted sort of interest, expression pensive.

"She's my girlfriend, Mum," Lysander says defensively, reaching out to secure Jenny against him in case she does something rash, suddenly acutely aware of all the people now staring at them, "She's just a bit annoyed. She's fine."

"I am not _fine_," Jenny hisses in protest, tugging ineffectually at his grip, "I am _not _okay with this."

"Then be okay," Lysander whispers firmly in her ear, only inflaming her temper further, "Please, please. It's not that big a deal. It's just –"

"It is a _huge _deal, Lysander," she retorts furiously, twisting to look up at him, hair swinging, "I love you, okay, and I am not having anybody treating you like you're not worth anything, even your parents."

He goes very still behind her suddenly, and she doesn't have time to wonder about that before he's dragging her away from all the prying eyes and into the potting shed, shutting the door firmly and casting silencing charms all over the place before he finally turns to face her, leaning back against the door as if for support. She is expecting anger, defensiveness maybe. But his expression is not angry. It is anything but angry.

"Do you," he starts, cutting himself off suddenly, and she has to bite hard on the inside of her cheek because, God, every little habit of his is so dear to her, "Do you mean it? Do you… do you really love me?"

Her rage is gone, instantly, draining out of her in seconds, and her face is fond and exasperated and lovely as she exclaims, "Of _course_, you idiot!"

He breathes out, hard, and then he's looking up at her with brightbright eyes and whispering, "I love you too. A lot."

She laughs suddenly because she thinks she might cry if she doesn't, and then she's almost running at him as he moves to meet her, and they crash together in a messy, hungry kiss as he anchors her against him, desperate and relieved and blissful.

By the time they come out of the potting shed, the row is forgotten and Lorcan and Lysander's parents have left, and Molly Weasley is already making up beds for the twins on the third floor of her rickety house.

Without saying a word, Jenny and Lysander join hands and find a spare bench, leaning against each other and letting the party drift over them, speechless and totally content.


	24. VictoireLorcan

**a/n**: had a depressing evening, so I'm taking it out on Victoire. It's a little... out there. Bear with it.

**words**: 1421

* * *

save me, save me, save me  
**victoirelorcan**

white lips, pale face, breathing in snowflakes  
burnt lungs, sour taste, lights gone, days end  
- _the a team, ed sheeran_

* * *

If she could see herself the way he sees her she'd hate it, hate it, and she'd run and scream and try to break away from it but the imprint of it is on her skin, searing and solid and desperate.

Men blur before her eyes these days because if she'll have nothing she'll still have this beauty, thank you very much, this genetic gift of beauty passed from an inhuman ancestor which burns beneath her surface and boils in her veins. She goes out night after night with these Muggle friends she barely remembers the names of and her lovely blonde hair shifts under low hot lights and her eyes beg men to love her.

He finds her on his doorstep one night. He's arriving home from his girlfriend's place, keys in one hand and his satchel with his things in over his shoulder. He pauses as he sees her there, expression wary, and she raises smudged-mascara-eyes to him and just looks, mute.

"Victoire?" he says, and he has to make it a question because he's so confused (and _terrified_ for her, for the trainwreck she's become) and she's still just looking at him, and, "What are you doing here?"

"I was in the neighbourhood," she explains, long legs unfolding from their cross-legged position as she scrambles to her feet in an action that would be inelegant were it not for the portion of her that is Veela, "Thought I'd drop by."

He toys with the keys in his hand, metal jingling, and just looks at her steadily. She drops her gaze first, blueblue eyes diving towards the ground as she whispers, "And I don't have anywhere else to go."

He sighs, and lets her in. She sleeps on his couch in the clothes she was wearing and she's gone before he's awake the next morning. He thinks, okay, that's it, and he doesn't mention the episode to any of her family. It's just a phase she's going through, he reassures himself, because she's twenty-eight and her long-term boyfriend just broke up with her and she's been with him since she was _seventeen _and she needs some time to let loose and be single.

She's at his door again that night. And the night after that, and after that. The pattern repeats itself, night after night, the desperation on his doorstep and then she's vanished the next morning like a ghost, the only evidence of her presence a faint lingering of cigarette smoke. He starts to expect it, anticipate it, and he finds himself making excuses to his girlfriend so he can be there each evening for this lovely woman with the broken heart.

One night she's not there and it scares him so much he goes out looking for her. He hits up the local party spots, and hating himself checks in at the police station and the hospital and then the places he knows the druggies hang out. He finds her after an age, leaning against some man's car and obviously flirting, although in her inebriated state she can't do much more than gabble and look gorgeous.

Without a word he swings her up into his arms and apparates her back to his place. They land in his sitting room and she's spitting and hissing and twisting to get away until she realises it's him.

"Lorcan," she murmurs, blinking up at him with those beautiful eyes, and then she's turning her face into his chest and sobbing like she's tearing apart. He sits down on the sofa and holds her and holds her and he can't understand this, can't understand any of it, and her hands shake against his stomach and he just mutters soothing nothings into her knotted hair.

When she's cried herself out she's curiously docile, like a child, and she lets him lead her into the bathroom and shove her under the running shower, stripping her clothes from her like a child until she's standing shivering under the hot water in just her bra and knickers, looking and looking at him so helplessly he can almost feel his heart breaking for her.

"Why are you doing this?" she mutters as he wraps soft white towels around her, her golden hair dark with water, her eyes trained on his face like she'll find secrets there, "You don't – I've never done anything for you."

He doesn't have anything to reply to this, because he honestly _doesn't know _why he's doing this. Because she's so helpless and beautiful and Victoire and she turned up on his doorstep and he's always had a thing for damaged people and trying to fix them. All good reasons, but he can't find a way to put them into words.

So he settles for, "That's what friends do," and it seems to please her because she lets him towel her dry and tuck her into his bed. He means to leave her there alone, curled up in the duvet, but she's shivering again and her damp golden hair is strewn across his white pillows like a fairytale and her face is so pale he's honestly worried for her health.

"Shh," he murmurs as he climbs in beside her, wrapping his arms around her and trying to channel some of his body heat into hers, "It's okay. It's all okay."

She twists so she's got her face buried in his chest, fists clenched against his ribs, and there in the protective cage of his arms she sleeps so well that when she wakes in the morning she's forgotten almost everything but the feel of his heat against her coldness and the softness of his bedclothes against her bare skin.

By the time he wakes up she's sitting on the windowsill with one leg dangling out into the morning air, her expression serene as she gazes out over waking London, dressed in one of his shirts, the cigarette in her hand sending curls of smoke up into the freezing dawn air.

"That'll kill you," he warns, rubbing his eyes with both hands and then yawning and stretching like a cat, focusing somewhat blearily on her to add, "Even St Mungo's can't cure cancer."

She just shrugs, elusive and wordless as before, and resumes her gazing out onto the city. He sighs and clambers out of bed and crosses over to sit on the sill beside her, keeping both his legs firmly in the room as he watches her watching the city.

"How old are you now?" she asks suddenly, blowing smoke from her mouth with a flourish, shooting him a sidelong glance.

"Twenty-two," he tells her, tilting his head at her in curiosity, "Is that important?"

She frowns suddenly, brows drawing down, as she says with the air of a revelation, "I don't know. Maybe."

He's just watching her in confusion when suddenly she snaps to face him, expression a little wild as she curls her fingers into the bottom of her – his – shirt.

"Things blur," she tells him breathlessly, like this is a confession torn from a man on point of execution, "I try not to let them, I try so hard, but I can't – even though… since – since Teddy left, I just… I can't make things stay sane. Everything hurts unless I let it blur."

She's working herself up into a panic now, nostrils flared, hair falling into her face, knuckles white on her hands. He doesn't hesitate before gathering her to him and even as he's wondering how this has happened to her, how the Victoire he remembers has become _this_, he's rocking her gently and soothing her like he had the previous night, like she was a child scared of the dark shadows in the corner of her room.

"Stay here," he finds himself saying, the words quiet against the shine of her hair, "Stay with me. I won't let things blur any more for you."

She's very quiet for a long time, and he thinks she might even have fallen asleep when suddenly she's weaving in his embrace to press a kiss to his unshaven cheek, her lips soft and chapped and captivating.

"Thank you," she whispers, and then she's moving and sitting with both legs dangling out against the outside of the building, long and pale under the white shirt. Her head falls against his shoulder, her hair streaming down his chest, and he finds himself playing with the ends of it in fascination for the whole morning.

By the end of the day, he's in love with her.


	25. LucyScorpius

**a/n**: my strange mood is persisting. I wish I could make it go away so I could write more and update faster.

_words_: 2614

* * *

if this is despair  
**lucyscorpius**

i will not make the same mistakes that you did  
i will not let myself cause my heart so much misery  
_- Because of You, Kelly Clarkson_

* * *

Lucy Weasley is often ashamed of her father.

She knows she shouldn't be. He is her father, after all, for all his faults. But when he just sits in the kitchen and _watches _the clock as the hours tick inexorably onwards and Audrey still doesn't come home, Lucy paces the bare wooden floorboards of her bedroom and feels shame and resentment flooding through her, hot and bitter and raging.

She knows his eyes will flick upwards every now and again at the creaking of her feet on the floor, glasses slipping down his nose as he considers the ceiling absently, like he's looking at it from another world. Molly has sat with him on occasion, and she reports this back to Lucy the way she reports everything, with her hazel eyes wide and a child's eagerness for her big sister to tell her that everything will be alright.

Recently Lucy has become more adept at telling that particular lie.

She is pacing this evening. It is a quarter after midnight and her mother should have been home at five-thirty on the dot. Lucy does not expect her to come home until the morning, and she will be wearing yesterday's clothes and she won't even bother to come up with an excuse. She doesn't, these days.

Lucy has read a book cover-to-cover, tried on a new outfit for tomorrow, made up her face as though she was going to go out and listened to the newest album from her favourite band twice through. Now she is pacing again. Her thick socks have slipped from her knees to bunch around her ankles and she cannot find it within herself to care as she crosses the room, back and forth, the rhythm helping to calm her seething mind.

Suddenly her door opens a crack and Lucy whirls, dark hair flying, as a curly-haired head pokes around the door.

"Lucy?" Molly says quietly, slipping into the room and gazing up at her sister with those trusting hazel eyes, "I can't get to sleep."

Lucy stands there for a moment and gazes down at her baby sister, dressed in too-big pyjamas with her short red curls a messy halo about her head and her little snub nose wrinkled in consternation.

"Come here," Lucy decides eventually, opening up her arms. Molly's face cracks into a wide smile of relief, and she bounds forward into her sister's embrace. Lucy lifts her clean off her feet and sits down cross-legged on her bed with Molly in her lap. She settles herself back against the wall as Molly adjusts to get comfortable and then lies replete in her sister's arms, tracing the thick stripes on Lucy's navy-and-white jumper with one finger as she frowns slightly, her six-year-old brain evidently trying to think things through.

"Where's Mummy?" Molly asks eventually, abandoning Lucy's stripes to play with the dark ends of her sister's hair instead, hiding a yawn behind small hands.

"She probably went to see Granny and Granddaddy Hewitt," Lucy lies gently, scattering kisses onto Molly's russet curls, "You know she worries they don't see her enough."

"Oh," Molly says and then smiles sleepily, like this answer is a good one. Lucy breathes out silently, adjusting her arms so Molly can curl up more comfortably. Sometimes the lies work, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they work so well even Lucy starts to believe them just a little bit.

"Will Mummy leave?" Molly pipes up suddenly, tilting her head back so she can see Lucy's face, wrinkles creasing her pretty pale brow, "I don't think she wants to be here any more."

Lucy is floored by this question so thoroughly she cannot think up a good enough lie and Molly's frown deepens. Hating herself for even thinking it, Lucy quietly inquires, "Would it be so bad, if she did?"

"Daddy would be sad," Molly points out validly, and Lucy's eyes haze over with tears as she tilts her head back to hide her expression from Molly, focus snagging on the pretty sparkling trail of her fairy lights. She is just about to suggest to Molly that they try to get some sleep when the front door bangs and both sisters sit bolt upright instantly, frozen in position as they strain to catch every word.

Their mother's voice rises through the floorboards first, bright and breezy as she says, "Oh, darling, I'm so sorry. I know I'm late."

"Were you with him again?" their father's voice responds, and Lucy feels another hot wave of shame because he sounds just accepting, not angry or bitter or any of those things he should be sounding.

"Darling, you know –" Audrey begins, and Lucy cannot hear another word of it.

Silently she clambers off the bed, lifting Molly and placing her on her feet before rootling around in her cupboard as quietly as possible until she unearths the ankle boots her cousin Lily bought her last birthday, the voices from the kitchen rising louder and louder as she pretends she cannot hear them.

"Are you going somewhere?" Molly's voice demands querulously, and Lucy whirls around with one boot on to find her little sister standing with her arms folded, shades of their Weasley grandmother leaking into the ferocity in her eyes and authority in her stance. In her oversized white pyjamas, with her cheeks pale from lack of sleep and small feet freezing on the bare floorboards, she looks so young Lucy cannot help wanting to snatch her away into a secret world and live there with her so nobody can hurt them ever again.

"Yes," Lucy says with a small glint of humour in her eye, pulling a scarf out from the detritus in her wardrobe and draping it around Molly's neck with a sudden lightness of mood, expression mischievous and daring, "We are going to go and visit my boyfriend."

"Your _boyfriend_," Molly gasps, scandalised, and Lucy sets to work layering her sister up as Molly stands there and babbles quietly, mindful of not alerting their parents, holding her arms up obediently for Lucy to slip multiple jumpers over her head as she demands to know all about this boyfriend.

"His name is Scorpius," Lucy tells her as she drags woolly socks onto Molly's tiny feet, dragging her own hair half-back with a clip as she stands back to admire her handiwork, "He's in my year, in the same house as Albus and Rose."

Molly looks back, eyes bright under the lip of the woolly hat Lucy has forced onto her curls, arms folded with more difficulty than before over all her jumpers. Before Molly can add anything else, Lucy is sweeping her up into her arms to carry downstairs. She peeks over the banister, holding Molly tightly, and then as lightly as possible tiptoes down the stairs.

"Jump the last one," Molly reminds her in a whisper, and Lucy obeys and leaps the last step and lands noiselessly on the stone hall floor. Like two shadows, the sisters slip out of the front door and Lucy shuts it quietly behind her. It has started to snow outside, and Lucy is already shivering even as she sets Molly down on her feet and urges her to run.

So they run and make tracks through the layers of snow. Molly is unable to resist giggling and playing with it even as Lucy is chivvying her onwards, both of them going whiter than ever with the sub-zero temperatures. They run on through the darkness, the snow reflecting moonlight and casting an eerie glow as they race across blanketed fields and under icicled trees, clambering over five-bar gates and letting their laughter float out into the silence of the night.

As Lucy runs, breathless from laughing at Molly's antics and the exercise, she looks all around her and realises that, if she were a Muggle, this would be the kind of night that had her believing in magic. The world is so silent and sleepy and still, and Molly's flame-coloured curls peeping out from under the blue hat are one of the only splashes of colour.

They reach the big house they have been aiming for before long, and Lucy forces her way through a hole in the hedge, holding out her hand for Molly to follow her.

"I'm not sure we should be doing this," Molly cautions as they sneak around the side of the house. Lucy shushes her absentmindedly as she starts counting windows, bending to dig through the snow with bare freezing hands until she gets down to the gravel path.

"Hold these for me," she commands Molly in a whisper, tipping her handful of pebbles into Molly's obedient, gloved hands. She takes one and aims for the window just to the side of the huge oak tree, and then throws the stone up with a grunt for the effort. It misses, but three tries later and she succeeds in tapping at his windowpane. Two more shots have his light turning on, spilling the promise of warmth out onto the two girls, and another two have him appearing behind the glass.

He throws his window open the minute he recognises Lucy, her long dark hair damp from the snow and her skin nearly blue from the cold.

"Are you _mad_?" he hisses down at her, breath clouding out onto the midwinter air, "It's _Christmas Eve_. And it's freezing!"

"Please," Lucy forces out from between wildly chattering teeth, picking Molly up into her arms to try to keep them both a bit warmer, "Can we come in?"

"You brought –" Scorpius says, and then shakes his head and cuts himself off, slamming the window shut and disappearing.

"Do we have to go now?" Molly inquires in a small voice, her gloved hands rubbing at Lucy's cheeks to try to get her sister warm again. Lucy smiles and sneaks a kiss onto one of Molly's hands and then bears her towards a small door at the base of the wall. Silently they wait, and before long the door is creaking open and Scorpius is pulling them both into the dank cold air of his cellar.

"Are you mad?" he repeats in a quieter voice as Lucy sets Molly down, his eyes flicking up the length of her long bare legs under her denim shorts and to the blueness of her fingers, "You could have died!"

"You're so melodramatic," Lucy tells him with a smile, but she's shivering too much to laugh and Scorpius throws her one fond, exasperated glance before shepherding both sisters up into the hallway of his grand house. Molly gazes enraptured around herself as Scorpius leads them to his bedroom, cautioning them to be quiet as they sneak along the landing.

When they get to Scorpius' room, he shuts the door behind them and then just stands leaning against the dark wood and watching as Lucy crouches down in front of Molly, still shaking as she starts to pull her sister's layers off, her fingers too stiff to undo the buttons on her coat. With an affectionate smile, Scorpius pushes himself away from the door and gently shoves Lucy away from Molly towards the fire burning sleepily in the grate, clearly not long from dying.

Lucy sits cross-legged near the flames and watches with her lower lip caught between her teeth as Molly studies Scorpius mistrustfully as he does his best to help her unbutton her coat and pull all her jumpers off, her blue hat coming off with the second jumper and letting her red curls spring out and catch shines of the light. Once Molly is back down to her pyjamas and the heat has begun to entice a flush back to Lucy's cheeks, Molly scampers across the room to collapse into her sister's lap and curl up there like a contented kitten.

"Thanks," Lucy says to Scorpius with a grateful smile, looking up as he approaches them, the flickering light casting shadows onto his handsome golden face, "I'm sorry for just barging in like this."

"Don't worry about it," Scorpius tells her, dropping a hand onto her hair and then sitting down opposite the sisters, hugging his knees to him as he watches them silently. Lucy looks down to check that Molly is okay and then looks back up and catches his gaze and cannot help the big smile that wants to escape. It feels alien, to be smiling this broadly during the holidays. Her smiles usually come in the term time, well away from the stresses of home life. But here, with her sister's warm weight in her lap and his messy bedroom enfolding her like protecting arms and the heat of the fire on the side of her face and his gentle silver-eyed stare boring into hers, here she smiles so widely she thinks her cheeks might break and has to duck her face into Molly's hair to hide her expression from him.

They sit and talk for an hour about inconsequential things like reindeer and Christmas presents and he is so charming and gracious towards Molly that Lucy wants to cry, and when her sister finally drops off to sleep Scorpius lifts her and tucks her into his bed, and then he drops down onto his knees in front of Lucy.

"Why?" he says, reaching for her hands. Her fingers are still freezing, like they always are, even in the depths of summer. Her blue eyes reflect the flames as she gazes at him blankly. When she tries to turn away, his fingers reach out and catch her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. Defeated, she shuts her eyes and feels her whole body drooping.

"My parents – I just couldn't bear it any more. Mum was nearly seven hours late and Dad wasn't even _angry_, you know? Just so pathetic and accepting and then they started arguing and… I had to leave. The house was suffocating me. And I couldn't exactly leave Molly alone and sleepless in a house with fighting parents on Christmas Eve, could I?"

"Lucy," he breathes, and then she feels lips against her tears and when she opens her eyes his face is mere inches from hers and he's smiling at her so gently she think it'll kill her, "I love you, okay. You just stay here with me. It'll be fine."

"It won't be," she protests helplessly, a sob catching the middle of her sentence, but then he's drawing her up to her knees too and silencing her with a lingering kiss, slow and languorous, his hands sure and comforting on her waist and his hair soft under her wandering cold fingertips.

They kiss by the fireplace for hours, heat seeping into her from his body and the flames. He shadows kisses up the pale column of her throat and she marks his collarbone hungrily and desperately and they lose themselves in each other until the fire burns out in the grate. Scorpius levers himself off of Lucy and she tugs her jumper down to cover her stomach again as he resets the fire, starting it with a flaring match before he tugs over onto his windowseat.

He pulls her into his lap, holding her close, and together they watch the night die and the sun rise to welcome Christmas day, and Molly wakes up at 6:59am on the dot and demands, "Has Santa been?" and out of nowhere Scorpius is roaring with laughter and producing a present out of nowhere for her and Lucy just sits on the windowseat with dawn casting rose light onto her cheeks and watches their heads bent over the wrapped box and thinks, "_I am so happy_."


	26. LouisKatherine

**a/n**: found time yesterday to write this while the kids were at school - it's a bit weird, so sorry.

**pairing**: KatieLouis  
**words**: 1864

* * *

the boy of many similes

a fire, a fire  
you can only take what you can carry  
- _If There's a Rocket Tie Me To It, Snow Patrol_

* * *

She finds him in the Arithmancy classroom with the window wide open and a look of desolation upon his face.

"What the –" she begins, and trails off before she completes her sentence. He has turned towards her, looking at her through unfocused eyes. His dark irises have that dangerous glitter, she notices, that they only get when he has had rather too much to drink and has given himself over to the courage the alcohol causes to course through him.

"You," he says firmly, like this is any greeting at all, and his grin is slippery at the corners as he comes towards her, "You are _beautiful_."

"And you are _drunk_," she tells him ascetically, approaching him and meeting him halfway, giving him such a shove he tumbles easily into a chair, his blonde hair in disarray and the blue of his eyes totally opaque in the quietness of the moonlight.

"I was celebrating," he tells her, and she has to be impressed because he gets the sound of the 'c' correct, "Celebrating, dear Katherine, because I have decided that I am well now."

Katie is now confused. Well, more confused than before, anyhow. She takes a seat opposite him, far enough away that he cannot strike her if he should lunge forward – she suspects he wouldn't, but with Louis Weasley you never really can tell.

"You were ill?" she inquires in a curious voice – she is sure that Lucy would have passed this on to her. Lucy always worries when her cousins get sick.

"Not like you think," Louis says, his head dropping forward like he has temporarily lost control of it, and when he looks up again his fringe is flopping into his unfocused eyes and he's got that tenseness about him that he gets sometimes, like a wildcat poised to spring. Katie doesn't spare the time to notice that for Louis Weasley, she always has a simile prepared.

"I have been," he announces suddenly, and she wishes he'd stop talking like something out of a Jane Austen novel, "Most befuddled in the mind. Afflicted with insanity, if you will."

"So, like, mad?" Katie ventures after a pregnant pause, beginning to regret ever approaching him.

"It is so," he concurs, inclining his head in a manner that may have been regal were it not for the fact that it causes him to nearly fall off his chair, "Mad, as you say, my dear."

Katie mouths 'my dear' in honest bewilderment as Louis, with a concentration that proves his inebriation, stands and twirls his chair so he can straddle it and lean his elbows on the back, propping his perfectly sculptured jaw on his palms.

"Mad how?" she asks after another long and uncomfortable silence. Louis gives a start, like he had forgotten this ongoing conversation, and suddenly points a shaky finger at her.

"Mad with _love_," he declares in a bare whisper, slurring the words into each other, "Terrible love, darling Kate, appalling, illegal, desperate love."

Katie is shaking her head now, trying to make sense of it all, "_Illegal _love?"

He fixes her with a scrutinising look, brows drawn unevenly – he has lost control of even his eyebrows now, Katie decides. Maybe she'd better get him to the hospital wing – in fact, she _definitely _better had… but she kind of wants his story first.

"Illegal how?" she asks, since he seems to be in no way inclined to answer her previous question. He frowns deeper, and then suddenly his expression clears, and he is waving that shaking finger in her face again.

"I can't tell you. You'll – you'll… you'll _laugh _at – no, no… you'll think I'm _sick_."

"Too late," Katie tells him, not without a hint of humour, but she falls serious instantly when he suddenly covers his face with his hands and then raises it, haggard, to face her again. His look is desperate, despairing, loathing. She would shrink from it, but the loathing is clearly meant for himself and not her.

She takes a deep breath and then drags her chair closer to him, putting a hand upon his shoulder and looking him full in the face, succouring him and giving him strength to impart this secret. And this, this is the thing with Louis Weasley. He plays it aloof and dangerous and insensitive, but she's been seeing for some time now how helpless he feels within.

"Tell me who you love," she commands him in a voice of infinite gentleness, raising her other hand to his cheek, sliding her fingers pale and slender against his flushed cheek, brushing at a tear leaking from one bloodshot eye.

He meets her gaze, and all of a sudden that glitter is hopelessly and totally gone and he's clutching at her as he breathes the name. It catches Katie totally by surprise – she had been expecting another boy's name, maybe, or a girlfriend of one of his cousins. But no matter how she looks at it, "Lucy" sounds like her best friend's name to a T.

"Lucy…" she says, trailing off hopefully. Surely this isn't happening. Surely there is another Lucy in the school she has conveniently forgotten about. Surely he hasn't just professed love for –

"You know who I mean," he tells her, and that sliding drunken smile is suddenly weaving itself onto his cheeks as he studies her face, hands slipping on her arms as he makes as if to restrain her. But she's not running away, and she won't run away. This is Louis, after all, and with him after a while morality kind of stops to matter so much.

"Lucy your cousin," Katie says, just to be sure. He covers his face again, and the words are a twisted kind of amused as he murmurs, "Told you you'd think I'm sick."

She says nothing for such an age that he raises his face again, and finds her gazing at him with infinite pity.

"She's easy to love," she tells him sadly, and his blue eyes are boring into her green as she grabs for sanity, "It's not your fault. You can't help who – who you, y'know, _fall for_. And I don't even think it's illegal," she adds in a thoughtful tone, tapping her forefinger against her teeth as she considers this, "I mean, people in books are getting married to their cousins all the time."

"They are?" he demands in astonishment, and then suddenly he's looking at her askance, expression disbelieving.

"You're lying. You're lying, you're lying 'cause you know I don't do books."

"Some Ravenclaw you make," Katie teases, and then abruptly she's sobering up and patting his hand where it is still clutching at her upper arm. "I mean the old books, the classics. You must know Jane Eyre? She nearly marries her cousin. It wasn't weird at all back then."

He is very silent and very still for a long time, but the look he has about him reminds her inexorably of that wildcat yet again, tense on the tail of prey.

"But this is now," he reminds her finally, and there is nothing but defeat in his body as he droops away from her, loosing her arms and turning his face to the side so the moonlight slanting through the open window catches the arch of his cheekbone and the shadow his lashes cast under his eye, "This is now and you shouldn't be trying to persuade me otherwise."

Katie is knocked sideways suddenly by the beauty of him, there in the moonlight. She forgets, sometimes, how breathless his good-looks are, how golden he is when you view him afresh, that bone structure and those promising blue eyes and the lips you can just imagine plunging you into ecstasy.

Just as she's contemplating the curve of his neck and the grace therein, he ruins the picture by falling off his chair.

She stands and gazes down at him sadly for long, long moments, heavy and pitying in the silver slant of moonlight. Then she pulls out her wand and levitates him all the way to the Hospital Wing.

He doesn't remember the incident the next morning, and she pretends she knows nothing – but all the while her eyes are watching him watching Lucy and she aches inside without knowing why.

;;

She doesn't see him again after Hogwarts, not for several years at any rate. Any small modicum of friendship they had through mutual friends while at school wanes and when she comes across him at her cousin Molly's wedding, they meet as almost strangers.

"Hi," he says, hurriedly pretending he hasn't just been stealing wedding cake, "I'm Louis."

"Yeah," she replies, raising an eyebrow at him and pointedly not looking at the icing on his fingertips, "We used to know each other."

He looks at her, bewildered, so she elucidates, "I'm Katie. Katherine. Finnegan. Lucy's best friend?"

His eyebrows shoot upwards at this last, and he's obviously trying to piece together a half-forgotten memory as he studies her like she'll give clues. His face clears suddenly, and all of a sudden suffuses with colour. She is appalled to discover that, even ten years out of Hogwarts, that sheepish smile still has the force to take the wind right out of her.

"Did I rave drunkenly to you once?" he inquires, looking like he hopes the ground will swallow him up, "Because –"

"You did," she informs him without remorse, grinning slightly, "It was impressive raving, actually – Albus told me later that you'd consumed twice what usually has you paralytic."

He laughs, briefly, like he's forgetting himself a little, and as his face opens out with amusement she realises that he has not lost even an inch of his attractiveness – if anything, age has improved him, she decides.

He stops laughing and looks at her suddenly, blue eyes piercing and so different from those unfocused orbs that once despaired at her. His next comment makes her laugh, and they start a conversation and end up passing most of the wedding reception in each other's company.

"It's not true any more, you know," he tells her later in the evening when the guests are beginning to drift away and only a few forlorn pieces of bunting are drifting across the grassy lawn where the reception was held, "What I was… upset about, that night. I don't love her any more. I haven't for a while now. It was just a phase, you know?"

"I know," she tells him with a smile, and she lets her head drop onto his shoulder with an ease that surprises her when she looks back upon it some time later, "You don't have to explain yourself to me, okay?"

He smiles against her hair and drops a gentle kiss onto her sandy curls, and they stay like that until the sun has set and the night, full of promises, begins to hang weighty over them.

"Fancy a drink back at my place?" he inquires eventually, voice husky in the silence of the evening, and she doesn't even have to consider before she's nodding her assent and he's tugging them both away through the constricting darkness to his front door.


	27. LorcanChloe

**a/n**: I spent half an hour today trying to scrape eggshell out of an eggcup. What is my life.

**pairing**: LorcanChloe  
**words**: 1821

* * *

through a lens lightly

oh glory, oh glory,  
this is how we'll dance  
- _Let The Flames Begin, Paramore_

* * *

He'd like to pretend he is immune to pretty girls. They ebb and flow in his line of work. He insists that he doesn't even really see them as people any more, just angles and shadows on canvases, waiting for him to turn them into art. And that's what he does. Before him, they're just pretty and mortal and fleeting as ticking seconds. But then he enters with his camera and all of a sudden they are ageless, unshakeable, and their canvas is painted to the best of his not inconsiderable skill.

It's how he meets her, the first time. He's admired her often, from afar. Her sunny smile would catch the light in his studio well, he thinks, and her blonde hair would look perfect against a blue backdrop to match her eyes. He's promised himself, though, that if he photographs her he'll get her at a moment of no smiling. She's always smiling in her photographs, Chloe Nott, and he'll be different if it means he has to make her cry.

She enters the headquarters of the Muggle magazine he's currently employed by, brought in freelance for this one piece.

"Perfect," the editor had said to him that morning with just a hint of a smile, "That's all we're asking, Mr Scamander."

He'd nodded and not smiled back – come on, she's seen his work, doesn't she know perfection is his everyday habit? – and headed off to ready his set.

When she first comes in he doesn't recognise her. She's done up to the nines, heavy make-up and provocative bright clothing and her hair seems to be built after the design of a beehive, with the bees still in it. He is so unimpressed he starts shouting, and as she is the only person in the room it is her he directs his wrath at.

"Are you _mad_? I can't work with this! This is – I could photograph a _doll _and it would have the same effect! How on Earth am I supposed to do anything with you like this? Go back and get it off. All of it."

She just stands there and stares at him, mute, and that glorious golden smile has been wiped clean off her face. He finds himself minding about that, and he doesn't know why.

"Now," he adds in a hiss, because she hasn't moved and this is ridiculous, this is just, oh, he doesn't even have words to describe how cross this makes him.

"I asked them not to," she pipes up eventually, and in the way she's twisting her hands in the ruffled skirt and looking so determinedly at her shoes he sees a hint of innocence, a glint of something not yet broken by the paparazzi, "I didn't want it all. I just –"

"I don't care about that," he interrupts because, yeah she's upset, but he kind of has a reputation to uphold, "Go get it off."

Still looking at the floor, she walks disconsolately out of the room, shoulders slumped and whole being radiating sadness. He fiddles with his camera as he tries not to feel guilty and waits for her to return.

She comes back attired as before, but there's steel in her gaze and she looks like she is struggling to control her temper.

"They said to keep it on," she announces crossly, in such a way that makes him seem her ally or something, "They said it's their magazine and they get to chose."

"Well I'm not having that," Lorcan says in barely concealed fury, throwing his arms up in a consciously overdramatic fashion, "Go back and –"

"I'm an actress, not an owl," she tells him with a sudden fire, causing the tripod his camera is perched on to tremble ever-so-slightly, and he's brought back to Earth with a bump, detached from his anger as he remembers that here is a fellow magic-user, and yes they're both skilled in Muggle professions but they are two of that tiny, intimate band of magic-folk-with-Muggle-fame, that rare breed which glitters like stars across both worlds.

He is silent for a long while as he stares at her, and she stares back, and he finds himself noticing that the blue of her eyes is his favourite shade. He chases the thought back where it came from and, never to be defeated by people who consider themselves his superior, waves her onto the blue sheet of paper that will be his set.

"Don't you want me to, I dunno, change or something?" she asks as she wobbles over in her ridiculously high heels, having to clutch at the odd light fixture, "I mean, you do hate this."

"I do," he concurs pleasantly, directing her to the centre, "So take it off."

She freezes right there in front of the camera, half-mortified and half-tempted, and he meets her challenging gaze with his own as he snaps a picture of her standing there. They keep that contact for so long he aches of it, and when it is finally broken it is because she is lifting the bright gold and horrifically bespangled jumper over her head.

He stands behind his camera and takes picture after picture as she undresses, at first solemnly and then with more enjoyment, kicking the awful clothes from her like they will infect her with bad taste and tearing at the pins in her hair and smearing her make-up with her bare hands until she stands in front of the camera, looking directly at it, mascara mingling with eyeshadow and hair a wild golden mess around her face, dressed in only a short white under dress and her confidence, hands all colourful with make up as she stretches them out towards him.

It's that photo, he knows, the minute he's taken it. And even he, oblivious to females – he thinks – cannot help but notice the charge in the air as he raises his face from his lens and looks at her, standing there in the wreckage of her costume with her smile long since departed and her twenty four years of living seemingly weighing heavy on her shoulders.

"Good," he says, and that word is all he utters before he leaves her standing there and yanks his camera from its stand, crossing right over to his Muggle laptop and beginning to transfer the photos over.

He becomes aware of her presence as she crosses the room to stand behind him, but he pretends to be oblivious as he impatiently waits for the photos to download, briefly flicking through some other collections of photos he's taken in the past.

"Isn't that Francis Holmes?" she demands suddenly, and he's getting flashes of that blonde teenager who used to obsess over the celebrity pages of Teen Witch Weekly during breakfast at Hogwarts as she hurriedly knocks his fingers from his mouse-pad and taps impatiently at the keyboard, unfamiliar with this sort of technology for all her six years living in the Muggle world.

"Obviously," he drawls sarcastically, but she's not even paying attention as she reverently manages to bring up the photo and stares at it like it is one of her dreams come to life in front of her.

"Oh, _Merlin_," she exclaims almost ecclesiastically, "He's _so _gorgeous. Hey," she says suddenly, whirling on him, and that bubbly personality which has so entranced the public is suddenly switched back on full blast as she demands, "Can you introduce me to him? You could, I bet. I bet you're friends after you took these photos, they're great by the way, but you totally could introduce me if you wanted I just _know _you could. Will you? Please?"

Slightly taken aback, Lorcan shuts the picture of the famous wizarding guitarist and, as he taps at his laptop, inquires, "Couldn't you just introduce yourself?"

"Don't be stupid," she commands instantly, flopping into a chair with a dramatic air, "He wouldn't want to meet _me_!"

"Actually I think any guy would give his right leg to meet you," Lorcan tells her absently, and his brain doesn't catch up with what his mouth has just said until she takes a sharp breath in, and he hastily covers his blunder by finally finding her pictures.

"Look," he says hurriedly to distract her, twisting the computer towards her, "Look, see?"

She falls silent and almost subdued as he moves through the pictures, making no comment on the beauty of her laughing face as she toes an absurd high heel off-camera, or on the impossible elegance of her curved back as she bends to tug her disgusting skirt off. She makes no sound until Lorcan comes to the last photo, and then a small exhalation escapes her. He is knocked sideways by the grace of it, too, even though he was the one who took it. Looking at her small slim figure in the centre of the wreckage, smudged mascara so black and smeared gold-and-blue eyeshadow so bright against her palepale cheeks, it makes something inside of him want to cry without him knowing why.

"Thank you," she says suddenly, and she looks terribly young as she turns her face up to him, make up still providing a brilliant contrast to the white of her skin, "For this. This is… I don't even know. But thank you."

He looks down at her looking up at him, and something about it all has his hand sliding to the back of her neck and his lips coming down to meet hers, and her groan of ecstasy is instantly snatched up by his searching tongue.

When they part, the stars in her eyes sparkle more than the glitter of her eyeshadow and her expression is hazy, disbelieving, blissful.

"Come to my place?" he breathes less than a centimetre from her lips, and she's barely even nodded an assent before he is gathering her into his arms and apparating her away from all of this to his small flat near Kensington. She pauses a while in his hallway to wonder over his books – they cover every wall, _form _walls in some places, with no shelves, just stacked on top of one another.

"Did you rob a library or what?" she demands as he appears out of the bathroom, lazy inviting grin written right across his face.

"I like to read," he explains as he takes her wrist and tugs her into his bedroom, drawing her against him and thrilling at the feel of her small waist in his hands, the heat of her lips on his collarbone.

"I still think it's excessive," she murmurs as she pushes him down onto his bed, working at the buttons of his shirt, "Bit ostentatious."

"We can argue about it later," he whispers reassuringly against the soft skin of her shoulder, and that sounds like such a good idea to her that she submits to it without compunction and instead loses herself in the feel of his hands on her spine and his lips at her neck.


	28. LysanderRoxanne

**a/n**: I have like another eight oneshots to write for Lysander and six for Lorcan, whereas only four or fewer for the other boys so you might get a bit overloaded with the twins for a while, my apologies.

**pairing**: LysanderRoxanne**  
words: **1392

* * *

what if they knew you were counting the hours

_i need something to believe in,  
'cause i don't believe in myself.  
_- I Need Something, Newton Faulkner

* * *

"I'd kill you, if I could," she spits at him, and he thinks that she's really good at this overdramatising thing and she should go in for the stage or something.

"No you wouldn't," he tells her helpfully, and he's trying to swallow his smile but he doesn't think he's doing it very well, "You love me, remember?"

"Like hell," she hisses, and she gives him one very hard slap across the face and then stands there in front of him, chest heaving, as she tries to pretend that she doesn't instantly regret doing that.

He raises a hand, lazily and unconcernedly, and looks down at her. He finds a part of himself thinking about how the sun catches the indigo and copper threads in her dark hair, and ignores that part of him so well it's like it doesn't even exist.

"Ow," he says, mostly to break the silence, "I forget how good Weasley girls are at throwing punches. You should start self-defence classes or something."

"Stop it," she shrieks, and she's screaming now and he feels just the tiniest bit pleased with himself because she's never lovelier than when she's angry, "Why do you trivialise _everything_?"

"Deprived childhood, lack of parental presence in my home life, concentration issues, take your pick," he offers casually, sinking down onto the stone embrasure of a window and raising a hand to feel the heat on his cheek where she slapped him, "That counsellor your aunt trundled me off to reckons it's an attention-seeking device or something. Like I need to seek attention, please."

He has her at that, he realises. The colour is diffusing from her face a little, just around the edges, and he thinks as she takes a step across the hallway towards him that Lorcan could come up with a really good metaphor for this relationship, and it's a pity because he's not Lorcan and metaphors aren't really his thing.

"You do scream attention," she concedes, and next thing he realises she's flopping down onto the seat next to him and dropping her head against his arm, her dark hair spilling into his lap, "Not in a good way, mind."

He moves his arm to wrap around her and then tugs her bodily into his lap, securing her against him as she sighs and presses her face into his chest.

"You could be nicer," she informs him, her voice muffled against the wool of his jumper, "You'd have more friends then."

"I don't need friends," he reminds her, and he's too, too, too _something_ and it has her wanting to cry.

"Please," she says, and her arms are anchoring around his neck as her lips find their way to the soft skin under his ear, "Please, for me, just try."

He doesn't answer, and she sighs as he kisses her instead, mouth sliding onto hers and melting her as his hands burn recklessness into her waist, and she thinks that this is the way, with him – he infuriates her and antagonises her and winds her up, but the way he looks at her and touches her sometimes; sometimes she loves him so much she think she might die of it.

"We shouldn't," she gasps into the skin of his throat as his hands move with astonishing self-assurance to the buttons of her cardigan, making her tremble with longing as he brushes against that spot just over her ribs that makes her buckle.

"Shh," he commands softly, and she can almost feel his grin against her hair, "You're the prefect on duty here, remember?"

"So I should be setting an example," she protests, but he's started on her shirt now and she finds her own fingers yanking at the bottom of his sweatshirt, and as the torches start to flicker out to show the lateness of the hour he pushes the shirt and cardigan from her slim, tanned shoulders. Her tie pools on the floor as his hands, so pale against the dark skin of her stomach, dance coaxingly along the lace of her bra.

"You're so beautiful," he breathes, and his touch is so sure and her body so responsive that soon she loses patience with the suddenly complicated buttons on his shirt and just rips it from him, scattering buttons as she pulls his mouth to hers with a needy groan.

Torsos pressing against each other, they kiss on and on, and as her hands bury themselves in his curly golden hair his fingers drift to the catch at the back of her bra and he's seconds from divesting her of this barrier when suddenly a light rushes from nowhere to half-blind them and their pupils contract in agony, hands raised to shield their eyes from the invasion.

"Miss Weasley," a voice says from behind the lit up wand, and the grinning young Charms teacher appears in the circle of light suddenly, "Nice bra."

Flushing bright, bright red, Roxanne falls from Lysander's lap and starts scrambling for her clothes.

"I'm so sorry, sir, I just, I was, we were –" she is cut off as Lysander easily pushes his own jumper over her head, leaving her hair all static and her appearance more dishevelled than ever.

"It's alright," the teacher promises, tapping his nose to indicate he'll keep the secret, "I've just walked in on your cousin Lily in a much more compromising situation with one of the last people she should be engaging in such activities with, so this little… whatever, is totally eclipsed."

Roxanne is staggering to her feet now, moving back against the reassuring solidity of Lysander's bare chest and warmth, but her brows are drawing down over suspicious blue eyes as she gazes at the professor.

"One of the last people how?" she demands, and then as he tilts his head to the side and raises his eyebrows at her, "Oh."

"Oh indeed," the teacher replies, and Lysander is looking between them in confusion as Roxanne shakes her head and tugs at the bottom of Lysander's jumper and scowls.

"She promised me it was just coffee and Defence tutoring," she says, and then she shakes her head again and shuts her eyes for a second or two. "Never mind. It's not important. She'll tell me when she's ready."

The teacher nods and then gestures at them both, "Go on, get away with you. I'm not letting you off this easy next time, okay?"

"Thanks, sir," Roxanne mumbles, and then she takes Lysander's hand and flees into the darkness.

"What was that about?" he demands the moment they're out of earshot, stealing along an unlit corridor in and out of patches of moonlight, extraneous clothing thrown over arms, "I didn't understand at all."

"It doesn't matter," Roxanne answers, pausing to slip her shoes off and allow herself to pad on totally silent feet along the stone floor, "Just Lily being – well, Lily. When she wants something, she gets it."

Lysander is clearly puzzled now, and he pesters her for three more corridors until Roxanne finally rounds on him and snaps, "Don't tell me you haven't seen the way she looks at Ted– I mean, Professor Lupin?"

Lysander falls into silence for a long while, and they are nearly back to the Fat Lady when he pipes up, "And the way he looks back."

Roxanne pauses and meets his gaze then, and she thinks that right now he could be spoiling for an argument or something so she reaches up and kisses him, featherlight, and when she finally pulls back his blue eyes are hazy and he is staring at her unfocused with something that could be love in his expression. If, you know, he wasn't Lysander and all.

"Thank you for tonight," she murmurs, and then hastily adds, "And just so you know I think I'm in love with you," and then she flees. She sprints down the corridor and through the portrait hole and up to her dorm before he can recover his wits and catch up to her. It feels a relief to have it off her chest and if he now freaks and breaks up with her, at least she said it.

She doesn't see him standing stupefied in the lonely arching darkness of the corridor, or see the grin that breaks out on his face or the fist he punches into the air in triumph.


	29. RoseLysander

**a/n**: this is the awkward moment where I have to own up to the fact that I've had this written for ages now, at least two months if not more. I've been putting off posting it because I didn't want to have two Lysander chapters next to each other but to be honest I doubt I'll get another chapter written before Christmas now and I felt guilty so I decided to just go ahead and post. Sorry, everyone!

Also if anyone has a spare minute and could check out my profile that would be much appreciated, I really need some help.

* * *

could we be  
**roselysander**

some people wear their history  
like a map on their face  
_-__L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N., __Noah __and __the __Whale_

* * *

He goes into their bedroom quite a bit, and he doesn't really know why but he thinks it might have something to do with the way she blushes and clutches the sheets tighter around her and the way Lorcan shrieks at him to get out. He has a new excuse every time (-"I just wanted to borrow your quill"-"Did Mum write you?"-"Rose, Lily called"-) and it's something a bit like a game these days.

The unfortunate thing about the layout of his and Lorcan's shared flat is that their bedrooms are next to each other and the walls are really, _really _thin. And he loves his brother and everything but he's getting totally sick of his complete inability to remember silencing charms. So he's kept awake night after night and he complains about it over breakfast and she blushes more and Lorcan just sits there with a stupid grin on his face and his arm around her waist, spooning up Cornflakes with his spare hand.

Because Lysander's that sort of guy, he starts putting salt in Lorcan's packets of Cornflakes and bringing home creatures from work to wreak havoc on the flat so Lorcan has to spend hours tidying it and shrinking Rose's clothes when she leaves them draped across the furniture.

It doesn't help that funny sort of tightening around his heart, though, whenever she gives Lorcan that look or he hears her breathless moans through the bedroom wall.

"She's my girlfriend, suck it up," is Lorcan's only contribution when Lysander corners him alone one day and gives vent to his frustration, and when he walks away Lysander doesn't know what name to put to the feeling inside of him. She's stealing Lorcan away, this pretty girl with the red hair and the quick wit, and he wants to hate her for it. But the thing is, okay, the thing is that he _can__'__t_.

He's up at six o' clock one morning. He's always been an early riser, bursting with energy, but these disturbed nights are taking their toll and so it's with far less enthusiasm than usual that he stands with his back to the kitchen, forehead leaning against the cupboard as he waits for the coffee machine to finish making his coffee.

"Morning," a small voice says from the doorway, and he whirls around to find Rose standing there, hair rumpled with sleep (and something else he won't think about), dressed in a man's shirt and with her arms wrapped around herself. He won't tell her that that's his shirt, that Lorcan borrowed it for his dinner with her last night; and he especially won't tell her what it does to him to see her wearing it.

"Morning," he replies, suddenly acutely conscious of the fact that he's standing there wearing nothing but a pair of boxers covered in hinkypunks, "Sorry, I didn't – I thought you'd be asleep for ages yet."

"Had a bad dream," she explains, and there's a faint blush tinting her pale cheeks as she crosses the room and drops into a chair at the table, deliberately not looking at his boxers.

He doesn't really know what to say next, so he just watches her for a moment and then turns back to his coffee. He pours himself a steaming mug and then, as an afterthought, cranes his head around, "Do you want one?"

"Please," she says, with a smile, and without another word he pours a mug for her and puts it on the table in front of her, lining up milk and sugar for her to add as she pleases.

He looks at her not looking at him as she focuses carefully on adding milk and, urgh, three spoons of sugar, and as she's not looking at him she says, "You take your coffee black now?"

"Yeah, I –" he begins, and then his eyes narrow and he cuts himself off, "What do you mean, 'now'?"

"Oh, it's just," she says, lips twisting in embarrassment as she glances up and meets his eye, "You always took it with milk at school. I remember."

He frowns at her, trying to work out why it feels like it matters that she remembers, but then she makes some inane comment about the weather and he replies equally inanely and they sit and chat about shallow things for hours, until she hears Lorcan stirring and heads off to take a shower.

Lysander watches her leave, eyes tracing the length of her bare pale legs beneath his shirt, and tries not to think about how that pretty red hair would look great spread out across his pillows with her body pressed down by his into the mattress and her eyes locked onto his, hazy and clouded and wanting.

;

It turns into a _thing_, these early-morning rendezvous', and gradually they start talking about things that really matter, deep things like the way it makes him feel that his parents practically abandoned him and his brother and how it is for her to have every move and every mistake documented by the paparazzi.

"I don't talk about this with Lorcan," she volunteers one morning when the heavy clouds seem to be pressing against the windows and the rain is hammering down. She has her knees drawn up against her chest, coffee clutched tightly between both hands (she's started taking it black recently and he doesn't know why he's noticed), wearing his shirt again. Lorcan is gone, risen early for the dawn shift in the emergency room at St Mungo's, and Rose and Lysander have been up since he left, sitting in the kitchen with their coffee talking about some things that matter and some things that don't.

"Me neither," Lysander tells her with a grin, and she elbows him with a mock-exasperated expression and he laughs and doesn't even complain that she's spilt coffee on his pyjama bottoms.

"He's my boyfriend though," she presses, looking worried by this, "Shouldn't he be the one I talk about this with?"

"What, and leave me with nothing of you at all?" Lysander retorts, managing to infuse his tone with enough to humour to make it come off as a joke, "Give me something, Rose. If I don't have your secrets, what do I have?"

She is quiet for long moments, and he knows that she's seen right through him, and he's wondering what he should do and whether she'll even care and whether she's going to say anything until, "You shouldn't say things like that."

"Things like what," he replies shortly, his words brushing her comment off, manner more brusque than he's ever been with her. She just looks at him, those hazel eyes so disconcerting and _sad_.

"Please," she says, "Please Lysander. Please."

"Please _what_?" he demands caustically, even though he knows please what, throwing his seat back as he shoots to his feet ready to storm off – he knows she needs him to be this guy or she'll regret what she does next.

"Please," she says again, quieter this time, eyes not meeting his, "Just…"

"The thing is, Rose," he tells her, half turned away, not looking at her over his shoulder, "I don't know whether you're asking one please or the other."

She frowns slightly, then, and she's looking terribly puzzled until suddenly her expression clears and she puts her coffee down on the table. He turns back towards her, resting his hands on the back of his recently-vacated chair, the muscles under his tanned skin twisting with tension.

"I don't know either," she admits like this is something of a revelation to her as much as him, "I really don't."

"Find out," he commands tersely, "Because I can't deal with this. It's either please be with you or please leave you alone. I can't hang in the middle like this."

"Lysander –" she starts, but he's already leaving the room, storming out of the apartment, oblivious to the fact that he's just in a pair of pyjama bottoms. He apparates himself straight to the beach he and Lorcan used to go to as children with their old, mad grandfather, and for hours he loses himself in the salt and the spray and the silence.

;

It's Lorcan who finds him. Unsurprising, really, since Lorcan is the only one who really knows about this beach. Lysander has long since lost the willpower to rage and storm up and down the sand, so he's just sitting on the dunes watching the wild water and wondering about drowning.

"Thought I'd find you here," Lorcan says, dropping down out of nowhere to sit next to his twin, "I got more nervous the longer it took you to come and whine to me."

Lysander just snorts half-heartedly, not even in the mood to think up a witty retort, and the two sit there in silence together for a while.

"So Rose broke up with me," Lorcan announces eventually, chucking a pebble in the direction of the surf, "She was very cryptic about it too. She said –"

"I don't want to know what she said," Lysander interrupts because he thinks it might kill him to hear her words coming out of his brother's mouth. But Lorcan continues regardless, the way he always has, and his words are welcome and like acid at exactly the same time.

"She said that she was sorry but she didn't love me anymore, and she didn't think it mattered because she reckoned I liked someone else anyway, and – and this is the weird bit so I'm going to quote – 'it was always you that looked like him, and never the other way around for me'. Weird, huh?"

Lysander is silent until he can't bear to be any more, and out of nowhere he turns and hugs his brother. He needs to do that, on occasion. It's always been them, see, the whole time, living out of each other's pockets and depending upon each other and Lysander can't bear sometimes how much Lorcan means to him.

"You know how, when we meet people," Lysander says out of the blue, pulling away from his brother, "It's always you that introduces us. And you say your name, and then mine, and everyone looks at me like they've just noticed that I'm there and they say, 'oh, he looks just like you!', which is kind of an understatement since we're identical twins and all?"

"Yeah," Lorcan replies slowly, looking like he's not entirely sure where this is going, "Except from that funny-looking mole on your –"

"Yes, not the point," Lysander interrupts hastily, and then he just looks at Lorcan and he says, "Rose said to me once that people said that because they liked you best automatically. No, don't try to deny it, it's true. 'Cause you're the friendly one and you're all open and emotional and shit and I'm sulky and insensitive and all those things Molly always complains about, okay? So they think I look like you, like I'm the copy or something, because they like you more."

Lorcan has the appearance of one who has just been told something they do not comprehend in any way whatsoever. Lysander suspects this has something to do with his appalling ability to phrase things, but he waits quietly anyway. He's not disappointed – Lorcan's face suddenly clears, and he's giving Lysander a look that says everything.

"And to her I looked like you," he repeats slowly, "Not the other way around. Which means…"

Lysander meets his gaze despondently, sheepishly, and replies, "I'm sorry. If it makes it any better, I only fell in love with her after you started going out with her, which shows you have great taste in women since I'm – what's that thing Lucy called me? Oh, yeah – 'emotionally stunted and incapable of feeling anything except for the most amazing of women'. So, yeah, well done…?"

"You're in love with her?" Lorcan repeats in total shock, hair falling into his eyes as he leans away from his brother to survey him better.

Lysander just looks at him. "That's really a _surprise_ to you?"

Lorcan makes an unsure face and the brothers just sit and look at each other, neither really knowing what to say next. Finally, Lorcan loops an arm around Lysander's neck and they sit in companionable silence and stare out at the sea for what feels like an age.

"So, what now?" Lysander ventures at last, disturbing the comfortable peace as the sun starts to set.

"The future, my son," Lorcan tells him in a pompous old-man voice, like he's quoting someone, "What else but the future?"

"The future," Lysander concurs with a laugh, "Sounds like a plan." So together they clamber to their feet and stand to watch the day die. And if they daydream about two different girls with enchanting smiles and bewitching eyes, they don't mention it to each other.


End file.
